II  it 


JBRARY  ^ 

NIVERSITY  OF      \ 
CALIFORNIA 
SaN  DIEGO       J 


iSoofeg  6p  ptnx^  ^olt 


Calmirb.  Man  and  Nature.  Sixth  edition  re- 
vised.   Crown  8vo,  JSi-So. 

Sturmsee.  Man  and  Man.  Third  edition  re- 
vised.   Crown  8vo,  Si-so. 


On  the  Civic  Relations.  Being  a  third  edi- 
tion of  "  Talks  on  Civics  "  rewritten  from  the 
catechetical  into  the  expository  form,  and  re- 
vised and  enlarged. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 
Boston  and  New  York 


ON   THE 
CIVIC    RELATIONS 


BY 


HENRY  I^OLT,  A.B.,  LL.B.,  LL.D. 

Member  of  the  New  York  Academy  of  Political  Science,  the  American 

Political  Science  A  ssociation,  and  the  A  mericati  Eco7ioniic 

A  ssociation  ;  A  uthor  of ' '  Sturmsee  :  Man 

and  Man"  etc. 


BOSTON    AND    NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  COMPANY 

1907 


COPYRIGHT    1907    BY    HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN   &   CO. 

First  Edition  (  Third  of  "  Talks  on  Civics  ") printed  May  iqcfj 


PREFACE  TO  THE  THIRD  EDITION. 

While  this  book  is,  in  one  sense,  a  third  edition  of 
my  "Talks  on  Civics  ",  it  is  really,  in  many  important 
differences  and  additions,  almost  a  new  work.  Among 
the  peculiarities,  not  to  speak  of  the  defects,  under 
which  the  earlier  editions  labored,  was  the  catechetical 
form,  of  which  I  expressed  my  distrust  in  the  first 
preface.  That  form  was  adopted  largely  because  the 
work  was  aimed  at  very  young  pupils.  Before  it  was 
finished,  I  became  convinced,  as  stated  in  a  note  to 
the  earlier  editions,  that  the  aim  was  not  one  suited 
either  to  the  greatest  possible  usefulness  of  the  book, 
or  to  the  capacity  of  the  author.  Both  in  regard  to  the 
aim,  and  to  the  catechetical  form,  this  conviction  was 
supported  by  many  readers,  and  in  consequence  I 
have  rewritten  the  book.  The  rewriting  of  course  has 
led  to  many  differences  of  detail ;  and  the  growth  of  my 
own  convictions,  as  well  as  the  astonishing  develop- 
ment during  the  past  few  years  in  many  of  the  matters 
treated,  and  the  increase  of  topics  demanding  treat- 
ment, have  combined  to  make  the  work,  as  already 
stated,  in  many  particulars  a  new  one.  So  rapid  has 
been  the  development  in  some  partictdars,  as  almost 
to  render  them  unfit  for  treatment  in  a  book,  .and  to 
make  it  impossible  to  keep  pace  with  them  except  in 
the  daily  and  periodical  press.  Each  proof  and  each 
revise  has  clamored  for  insertions,  and  I  go  to  press 
neglecting  important  matter  that  has  appeared  since 
my  copy,  and  also  my  revises,  went  to  the  printer. 
I  must  even  beg  the  reader's  charity  for  some  incon- 


iv  Preface  to  the  Third  Edition. 

sistencies  that  must  have  escaped  me  between  matter 
coming  after  the  original  draft,  and  matter  contained 
in  it. 

Notwithstanding  the  space  saved  by  doing  away  with 
question  and  answer,  this  edition  is  more  than  a  hundred 
and  fifty  pages  longer  than  the  preceding  one.  The 
added  matter  contains  its  share  of  the  sort  of  repeti- 
tions that  were  confessed,  and  I  hope  justified,  in  the 
preface  to  the  first  edition.  Most  of  it  relates  to  "the 
labor  question",  socialism  and  municipal  trading,  and 
will  be  found  principally  in  Chapters  XIX-XXII,  and 
XXVIII-XXX. 

I  confess,  not  quite  without  shame,  to  having,  in  the 
earlier  editions,  handled  the  first  of  those  subjects  very 
briefly,  and  with  gloves;  the  excuse,  such  as  it  was, 
being  that  whatever  good  the  book  might  do,  would 
be  put  out  of  the  reach  of  common-school  pupils  by 
"Labor"  influences.  Having  come  to  realize,  however, 
before  the  book  was  finished,  that  it  had  grown  unavail- 
able for  such  pupils,  in  this  edition  I  have  entirely 
abandoned  the  attempt  to  adapt  it  to  them.  Yet 
there  may  be  places  where  enough  of  the  earlier  ten- 
derness for  the  juvenile  mind  has  survived,  to  demand 
my  humble  apologies  to  the  dignity  of  the  under- 
graduate. But  a  much  stronger  reason  for  the  changes 
regarding  the  subjects  mentioned,  was  their  growing 
importance.  In  the  six  years  since  the  second  edition 
was  published,  the  "labor  question"  has  become,  not- 
withstanding the  graft  in  corporations,  the  leading 
question  of  the  time.  I  am  sorry  that  my  limits  do 
not  permit  even  a  fuller  treatment  of  it,  but  less  sorry 
than  I  should  be  if  I  could  not  refer  the  readei;  for 
fuller  information  to  so  admirable  a  book  as  the  "Labor 
Problems"  of  Prof.  T.  S.  Adams  and  Miss  Helen  L. 
Sumner.  Despite  the  strange  showings  of  figures  which 
I  have  alluded  to  on  page  252,  and  despite  some  other 
matters  which  I  cannot  endorse.  Professor  Adams's 
chapter  on  Strikes  and  Boycotts  surpasses  anything  on 
tlie  subject  which  I  know.  The  book  has  appeared 
since  the  last  edition  of  this  one,  and  has  done  not  a 


Preface  to  the  Third  Edition.  v 

little  to  furnish  me  material  for  hope  that  this  edition 
may  be  an  improvement. 

What  I  have  found  to  say  regarding  the  right  to  stop 
work  and  the  right  to  strike,  tho  not  entirely  novel, 
and  tho  somewhat  anticipated  even  by  court  decisions, 
has  nevertheless  played  so  small  a  part  as  yet  in  dis- 
cussions of  the  subject,  that  I  cannot  help  regarding  it 
as  well  worth  saying.  I  am  also  vain  enough  to  hope 
that  the  additional  matter  regarding  socialism  may  do 
a  little  to  clear  up  in  some  minds  that  inevitably  foggy 
subject,  or  at  least  to  show  why  it  is  inevitably 
foggy. 

The  book  is  of  course  "second-hand":  to  write  from 
original  investigation  in  so  many  fields,  would  be  impos- 
sible: for  even  if  life  were  long  enough,  while  an  author 
would  be  investigating  one  department,  those  pre- 
viously gone  over  would  grow  beyond  him.  The  utmost 
possible  is  the  exercise  of  reasonable  care  and  dis- 
crimination in  choosing  authorities.  This  I  have  striven 
for,  but  I  have  not  made  any  attempt  like  those  which 
I  have  sometimes  been  uncharitable  enough  to  suspect 
in  others,  to  make  the  book  appear  more  learned  than 
it  is,  by  bothering  the  reader  with  citations  of  authori- 
ties for  all  the  statements. 

Tho  disliking  excuses,  I  will  allow  myself  the  one 
afforded  in  this  connection,  for  not  having  taken  the 
trouble  to  hunt  up  the  names  of  law  cases  when  they 
were  not  given  where  I  found  the  substance  of  the 
decisions.  A  book  intended  primarily  for  under- 
graduates and  general  readers,  does  not  need  details 
required  only  by  the  profession  and  investigators.  One 
of  the  critics  of  an  earlier  edition  was  at  the  pains  to 
inform  his  readers  that  its  treatment  of  law  topics 
can  be  of  little  use  to  the  profession.  It  will  also  be 
of  little  use  to  students  of  Chinese.  Perhaps,  however,  I 
may  be  excused  for  saying  that  other  critics  (I  do  not 
know  whether  of  equal  authority)  have  said  that  the 
book  contained  a  good  introduction  to  the  study  of  the 
municipal  law.  Whether  it  did  or  not,  this  edition 
contains  a  better  one,  largely  due  to  the  friends  named 


vi  Preface  to  the  Third  Edition. 

below.  I  have  also  gleaned  a  few  new  points  from 
Professor  Burdick's  "Essentials  of  Business  Law." 

I  am  indebted  for  various  valuable  criticisms  of  the 
earlier  editions  to  Professor  Daniels,  Judge  Baldwin, 
and  Messrs,  Samuel  Huntington  and  Ralph  Curtis  Ring- 
wait  of  the  New  York  bar. 

My  obligations  to  other  writers  not  consulted  for  the 
earlier  editions,  are,  I  believe,  all  acknowledged  in  the 
body  of  the  work. 

I  am  glad  again  to  name  Mr.  Neu,  and  to  express 
my  continued  obligation  for  his  admirable  proof-read- 
ing, and  for  help  in  the  cross-references  and  index. 

I  crave  the  reader's  consideration  for  the  reasons 
set  forth  in  the  preface  to  the  first  edition,  why  the 
work  is  a  considerable  departure  from  previous  works 
in  the  same  field. 

H.  H. 
New  York, 
March  29,  1907. 


FROM  THE   PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST 
EDITION. 

(March  i,  1901.) 

THE    MOTIVES. 

This  book  was  written  in  the  hope  of  doing  a  Httle 
something  to  develop  in  young  people  the  character  of 
mind  which  is  proof  against  political  quackery — espe- 
cially the  quackery  which  proposes  immediate  cures  by 
legislation  for  the  abiding  ills  resulting  from  human 
weakness  and  ignorance.  Since  the  Civil  War,  America 
has  been  cursed  by  such  proposals  probably  more  than 
any  other  country  ever  was.  What  beneficent  institu- 
tions we  have,  have  all  been  evolved  through  the  long 
and  painful  struggles  which  have  at  the  same  time 
evolved  character  and  morality.  If  Nature's  ways  are 
plain  in  anything,  they  are  plain  in  showing  that  it  is 
only  for  such  prices  that  she  yields  such  rewards.  And 
yet  of  all  our  hard-bought  institutions,  there  is  scarcely 
one,  from  a  stable  currency  down  to  the  very  right  of 
accumulating  property,  that  has  lately  escaped  a  strong 
attempt  to  overthrow  it,  and  to  substitute  for  it  some 
invention  of  the  moment — or  rather  some  invention 
bearing  a  name  of  the  moment,  but  being  really  a  form 
of  some  protean  error  as  old  as  history. 

As  these  errors  all  propose  to  get  along  faster  than 
Evolution,  they  would  of  course  be  impossible  to  a  mind 
habitually  recognizing  the  law  of  Evolution.  Yet  that 
law  has  not  even  been  named,  so  far  as  I  can  recall  at 
the  moment,  in  any  of  the  American  elementary  books 


viii  From  the  Preface  to  the  First  Edition. 

on  civic  subjects  that  I  have  been  able  to  get  hold  of.* 
This  may  not  in  all  cases  be  due  to  neglect,  but  some- 
times to  the  conviction  that  it  is  useless  to  present  the 
subject  to  the  young.  My  view  is  more  hopeful,  and 
this  book  is,  perhaps  more  than  anything  else,  an  at- 
tempt to  saturate  young  people's  minds  with  the  reali- 
zation that  social  institutions  are  evolutions,  and  there- 
fore (I)  that  they  can  no  more  be  modified  by  laws  or 
votes  or  any  other  manifestations  of  human  will  than 
plants  or  animals  can ;  but  (II)  that  they  can  be  modified 
as  much  as  plants  or  animals  can,  tho  only  by  the  same 
means — careful  study  of  their  life-histories  and  habits, 
and  cautious  efforts  in  accordance  with  the  proved  con- 
ditions of  their  well-being;  and  (III)  that  they  will  be 
vitiated  or  destroyed  by  forced  or  ignorant  treatment. 

This  is  why  I  have  spent  so  much  time  over  such 
topics  as  early  land-tenure  and  the  relations  of  status 
and  contract — in  short,  over  the  archseolog}^  of  the  sub- 
ject. I  want  to  give  the  pupil  a  consciousness  that  en- 
during institutions  are  growths,  and  do  not  spring  up 
responsive  to  any  magician's  wand,  be  it  in  the  hands  of 
Mr.  Altgeld,  Mr.  Bryan,  or  even  so  good  a  man  as  Henry 
George — I  want  to  accustom  him,  when  any  method  is 
presented  for  his  vote,  to  ask:    Has  this  thing  roots? 

A  second  motive  for  the  book  was  to  place  before 
American  youths  at  least  one  text -book  that  should  not 
claim  that  our  constitutions — state  and  national,  present 
the  final  word  of  human  wisdom.  Perhaps  the  admission 
of  notorious  defects  will  bring  upon  the  book  charges  of 
lack  of  patriotism,  yet  it  is  not  written  in  a  pessimistic 
spirit.  The  pessimist  generally  despairs  because  achieve- 
ments fall  short  of  ideals:  the  wise  man  compares, 
rather,  what  he  and  his  have  achieved,  with  what  others 
have  achieved.  Our  government  may  not  be  the  best, 
but  we  are  too  near  the  best  to  despair.  But  if  our  gov- 
ernment is  ideally  good  already,  why  bother  to  teach 

*  There  is  abundant  illustration  of  Evolution  in  ]Mr.  Fiske's 
"  Civil  Government  in  the  United  States  ",  but  I  believe  the  word 
is  not  even  mentioned,  perhaps  because  of  the  theological  preju- 
dices prevailing  so  far  back  in  the  dark  ages  as  ten  ycarg  ago. 


From  the  Preface  to  the  First  Edition.  ix 

anything  about  it  ? :  it  can  take  care  of  itself ;  and  in  fact, 
until  lately,  our  people  have  generally  been  taught  to 
leave  it  to  do  so. 

A  third  motive  of  the  book  has  been  to  get  some 
teaching  on  our  constantly  recurring  quCvStions  of  money, 
land-tenure,  distribution  and  taxation,  into  some  places 
where  Economics  are  not  usually  taught,  and  also  to 
get  into  some  places  where  Economics  are  taught,  a 
fuller  treatment  of  those  four  topics  than  is  usually 
given. 

A  fourth  intention  has  been  to  spread  a  just  concep- 
tion of  Contract.  The  absence  of  such  a  conception  is  at 
the  root  of  most  of  the  labor  troubles,  not  to  speak  of 
private  breaches  of  faith.  Those  who  realize  the  im- 
portance of  the  subject  will  not  be  impatient  with  the 
rather  protracted  and  abstract  discussion  that  prefaces 
the  treatment  of  the  laws  relating  to  it. 

In  time  the  pupil  will,  as  a  voter,  need  to  make  up  his 
mind  on  many  hard  subjects — so  hard,  some  of  them, 
that  for  his  conclusions,  or  anybody's,  to  be  taken  seri- 
ousl}'',  seems  almost  ridiculous.  But  I  am  not  sure  that 
just  that  fact  is  not  the  most  important  of  all  that  I  want 
him  to  appreciate — the  fact  that  in  broad  civic  questions, 
the  wisest  man  can  only  feel  his  way — as  Lincoln  did: 
and  that  of  all  pests  for  the  voter  to  avoid,  the  chief  is 
the  man  with  a  scheme — be  it  silverism,  greenbackism, 
grangerism,  socialism,  communism,  anarchism,  or  (I  am 
tempted  to  add)  protectionism  and  militarism,  but  some- 
times there  are  circumstances  justifying  these  two. 

This  attitude  regarding  a  scheme  may  seem  inconsist- 
ent with  my  close  approach  to  recommending  one  re- 
garding taxation.  But  that  approach  is  only  incidental 
to  an  effort  to  trace  the  indications  of  Evolution.  If  our 
men  of  schemes  would  honestly  restrict  themselves  to 
such  efforts,  they  would  be  less  dangerous. 

I  have  hoped  to  add  life,  as  well  as  significance, 
even  at  the  cost  of  interruptions,  by  frequent  compari- 
sons of  early  conditions  with  present  ones. 

I  have  not  hesitated  to  repeat — even  to  repeat  often, 
where  the  topic  seemed  worth  iterating  or  presenting 


X  From  the  Preface  to  the  First  Edition. 

from  several  sides.  The  significance  of  the  matters 
here  treated  is  not  as  plain  as  that  of  the  multiphcation- 
table,  which  needs  to  be  presented  but  once. 

THE    MATERIAL. 

From  the  unhmited  range  of  topics  embraced  in  civic 
relations,  how  to  select  the  little  bookful  best  adapted  to 
the  needs  of  the  average  American  youth,  is  a  hard 
problem.  Probably  .the  authors  of  some  of  the  other 
text-books  woiild  be  more  puzzled  to  find  good  reasons 
for  my  selections,  than  I  am  for  theirs.  They  generally 
give  much  more  attention  than  I  do  to  the  anatomy  of 
the  government — state  minutely  all  the  offices,  national, 
state  and  local,  and  not  only  the  qualifications  legally 
required  for  them,  but  even  for  voting  for  them.  Now 
most  of  these  things,  so  far  as  they  affect  a  vote,  the 
voter,  as  he  grows  up,  is  pretty  sure  to  learn  from  the 
world ;  and  so  far  as  they  do  not  affect  his  vote,  they 
must  be  relegated  to  the  vast  domain  of  useless  knowl- 
edge— unless  indeed  he  aspire  to  be,  as  a  politician, 
something  more  than  a  mere  voter.  The  few  boys, 
however,  who  have  this  spark  of  aspiration,  get  it  from 
the  altar  of  genius,  even  if  it  be  genius  for  nothing 
higher  than  running  a  primary:  and  genius  teaches 
itself. 

A  man  who  tries  to  judge  broad  questions  by  details 
is  not  going  to  get  anywhere :  they  involve  too  many  de- 
tails :  he  can  compass  but  a  small  part  of  them,  and  is  in 
danger  of  getting  the  wrong  ones  and  missing  the  right 
ones.  Broad  questions  can  only  be  judged  on  broad 
principles.  Then,  it  might  be  asked:  Why  expect  the 
man  of  ordinary  attainments  to  judge  them  at  all?  I 
never  have  been  able  to  find  out  why ;  but  inasmuch  as 
a  vote  has  been  given  him,  that  responsibility  has  been 
laid  upon  him,  whether  he  is  fit  for  it  or  not.  Well,  with 
a  fatuity  equal  perhaps  to  that  which  gave  him  the  vote, 
I  have  tried  in  this  little  book  to  give  him  some  notion 
of  the  broad  principles  on  which  the  vote  should  be 
used.     If  Ethics — the  profoundest   and  vaguest  of  all 


From  the  Preface  to  the  First  Edition.  xi 

sciences,  is  taught  in  some  shape  from  the  cradle,  is  it 
plain  that  problems  of  Civics  need  be  entirely  neglected 
in  all  shapes,  during  adolescence?  Frankly,  I  do  not 
expect  to  teach  very  much  about  them :  but  I  do  hope 
to  give  such  a  notion  of  how  some  sound  principles  look 
from  the  outside,  that  the  voter  can  tell  whether  they 
are  recognized  or  not  by  those  who  seek  his  suffrages, 
and  give  his  vote  accordingly. 

And  yet  I  am  far  from  believing  that  all  of  even  this 
little  book  can  have  much  meaning,  before  it  is  illumi- 
nated by  experience.  I  do  believe,  however,  that  much 
here  which  may  be  memorized  as  little  more  than  dog- 
matic statement,  will  gain  meaning  from  day  to  day, 
until  it  becomes  significant ;  and  I  have  even  some  hope 
that  if  the  desperate  experiment  fails  with  the  young, 
the  labor  may  be  rewarded  by  clarifying  to  some  maturer 
minds  a  grave  problem  or  two,  through  the  same  courses 
of  thought  (even  if  borrowed  thought)  that  have,  I 
assume,  clarified  them  to  my  own. 

It  may  seem  inconsistent  with  the  foregoing  talk 
about  broad  principles,  that  the  book 'includes  some 
groups  of  such  specific  rules  of  the  Municipal  Law  as  a 
layman  ought  to  know  and  might  have  to  learn  at  his 
cost  in  ordinary  business  experience.  Not  only,  how- 
ever, do  I  think  that  their  value  makes  them  a  justifi- 
able part  of  the  only  teaching  of  civic  relations  that 
many  of  my  hoped-for  readers  are  apt  to  get,  but  I 
have  tried  to  put  even  such  matter  in  such  a  way  that 
it  will  do  its  share  in  impressing  the  main  lesson  of 
the  book — the  evolution  of  all  the  elements  of  social 
order,  especially  the  inevitably  imperfect  evolution  of 
some  of  the  most  important  elements — "the  glorious 
uncertainties  of  the  law  ". 

The  original  design  included  a  second  part,  on  the 
Evolution  of  Government,  to  be  issued  in  the  same  vol- 
ume with  the  first.  The  first  part,  however,  as  is 
usually  the  case,  outran  expectation;  and  as  it  has  a 
certain  completeness  in  itself,  and  is  long  enough  to 
take  up  the  time  given  in  the  majority  of  classes  to 
the  subject,  and  especially  as  it  contains  most  of  the 


xii  From  the  Preface  to  the  First  Edition. 

"practical"  matter  contemplated  in  the  entire  scheme, 
it  has  been  thought  best  to  publish  it  without  waiting 
for  the  completion  of  the  second  part ;  and  perhaps 
to  let  the  completion  of  that  part  depend  upon  the 
reception  accorded  to  the  very  uncertain  experiment 
as  tried  in  the  present  volume. 

Although  in  this  part  the  evolution  of  several  institu- 
tions has  been  considered,  the  evolution  of  government 
in  general  has  not.  The  intention  for  the  second  part, 
has  been  not  only  to  -give  an  account  of  that,  but  also, 
as  a  natural  concomitant,  to  give  a  fuller  idea  of  the 
structure  of  government,  tho  substituting  for  much  of  the 
detail  usually  given  in  books  for  .the  same  grade  of  pupils, 
some  of  the  criticism  and  suggestion  usualh^  avoided. 

I  let  the  foregoing  paragraph  stand  to  emphasize  this 
one.  Since  that  one  was  written,  I  have  reread  the  "Civil 
Government  in  the  United  States  ",  by  my  lamented 
friend  Professor  John  Fiske,  and  I  realize  more  fully 
than  I  did  in  my  first  reading,  that  it  is  in  many  re- 
spects what,  while  writing  my  first  part,  I  have  come 
to  intend  my  second  part  to  be.  If  I  ever  carry  out 
that  intention,  it  will  be  because  of  the  other  respects, 
and  especially  because  of  a  desire  to  reach  minds  less 
mature  than  perhaps  Mr.  Fiske's  book  can  reach. 

Meanwhile,  and  perhaps  afterwards  (if  there  ever 
should  be  an  afterwards),  Mr.  Fiske's  book  may  be 
regarded  as  the  best  one  known  to  me  for  supplementing 
what  I  have  tried  to  do  here. 

AUTHORITIES. 

In  addition  to  some  of  the  older  authorities  which 
are  already  matters  of  course,  I  am  specially  indebted 
to  the  following,  most  of  which  are  rapidly  becom- 
ing matters  of  course,  if  not  so  already.  I  let  the 
list  grow  larger  than  is  usual  in  acknowledgments, 
in  order  that  it  may  serve  as  a  brief  bibliography 
for  the  use  of  teachers.* — The  late  David  A.  Wells's 

*  I  permit  this  to  stand,  tho  the  present  edition  is  intended 
for  a  grade  of  pupils  whose  teachers  will  know  more  of  the 
bibliography  of  the  subject  than  I  do. 


From  the  Preface  to  the  First  Edition.  xiii 

"Recent  Economic  Changes"  and  "Theory  and  Prac- 
tice of  Taxation  ",*  Professor  Mayo-Smith's  "Economics 
and  Statistics  ",  President  Hadley's  "Economics  ",  Pro- 
fessor Adams's  "Finance",  Professor  Daniels's  "Ele- 
ments of  Pubhc  Finance",  Professor  Seligman's  books 
on  Taxation,  Mr.  Shearman's  "Rational  Taxation", 
•  Judge  Baldwin's  "Modern  Political  Institutions",  Mr. 
Mallock's  "Labor  and  the  Popular  Welfare"  and 
"Classes  and  Masses",  Professor  Goodnow's  "Municipal 
Problems  ",  Doctor  Shaw's  books  on  Municipal  Govern- 
ment, the  valuable  quarterly  on  "Municipal  Affairs" 
published  by  the  Reform  Club,  especially  Dr.  Maltbie's 
number  on  "Municipal  Functions",  and  Mr.  Godkin's 
"Problems  of  Deinocracy"  as  well  as  The  Nation 
from  the  time  he  founded  it.  A  word  of  acknowledg- 
ment is  also  due  to  the  excellent  articles  on  Civic 
questions  in  Johnson's  Cycloj^Eedia. 

Among  elementary  books  for  pupils,  I  have  found 
help  in  Mr.  Raleigh's  admirable  little  "Elementary 
Politics"  (which,  unfortunately  for  us,  was  written  for 
England),  Professor  Robinson's  "Elementary  Law", 
Professor  Bolles's  "Commercial  Law  ",  the  summary  of 
Municipal  Law  in  Mr.  Young's  "Government  Class 
Book",  Mr.  Fiske's  "Civil  Government  in  the  United 
States  "  (tho.its  field  is  very  different  from  that  of  this 
volume),  and  in  several  features  of  Mr.  Martin's  "Civil 
Government".  His  summary  of  the  "Establishment 
of  Liberty  in  England"  (of  course  not  touched  in 
my  present  volume),  seems  to  me  a  little  gem^,  tho 
possibly  rather  condensed  for  the  young  pupil.  I  have 
also  found  Mr.  Ford's  "American  Citizen's  Manual" 
and  Mr.  Bartlett's  "What  I  ought  to  know  about  the 
Government  of  my  Country"  handy  for  quick  reference. 

*  Two  real  books  that  ought  to  be  read  by  every  human  being 
old  enough  and  civilized  enough  to  tuiderstand  them;  this,  too, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  latter  was  largely  written  during  the 
lamented  author's  last  illness,  and  therefore  lacks  the  terseness 
and  vigor  of  his  earlier  work.  It  appeared  after  the  chapters  on 
taxation  in  this  present  volume  were  written,  but  it  was  still  pos- 
sible to  inject  from  that  work  much  of  whatever  good  they  may 
contain. 


xiv  From  the  Preface  to  the  First  Edition. 

If  I  have  done  what  I  have  attempted,  as  well  as  these 
authors  have  done  the  very  different  things  which  they 
attempted,  I  ought  to  be  content. 

My  hearty  thanks  are  due  to  Mr.  Theodore  Neu'for 
rare  intelligence,  interest,  and  suggestiveness  in  read- 
ing the  proofs  and  preparing  the  index. 

I  am  also  under  very  great  obligations  to  Professor 
Goodnow  for  reading  the  proofs,  and  for  calling  atten- 
tion to  errors.  Of  course  he  is  not  responsible  for 
those  which  remain.  •  I  shall  be  similarly  grateful  to 
any  one  pointing  out  any  of  them. 


CONTENTS. 

Preface  to  the  Third  Edition page  iii 

From  the  Preface  to  the  First  Edition vii 

PRELIMINARY  SURVEY. 

Chapter    I. — Society's    Control   of    the    Individual — 
Government i 

Sec.  I.  Introductory.  2.  Social  Influence  and  Control :  2(a). 
through  the  Family;  2  (6).  through  Public  Opinion;  2  (c). 
through  Imitation;  2  {d).  through  Education;  2  ((?).  through 
Government.  3.  Civic  Relations  Defined.  4.  Government's 
Functions  Illustrated.  5.  Government's  Functions  Classified. 
5  (a).  Protection  of  Rights.  5  (6).  Promotion  of  Convenience. 
5  (c).  Taxation.  6.  Some  General  Results  of  Bad  Govern- 
ment. 7.  Responsibility  for  Bad  Government.  8.  Good  Gov- 
ernment Requires  Intelligence,  Character  and  Effort.  9.  Ex- 
tent of  Government's  Influence.     9  (a).   Illustrated  by  Money- 

Geographical  Divisions  of  Government. 

Sec.  10.  Each  Citizen  Lives  under  Several  Governments. 
II.  Overlappings  of  Local  Governments.  12.  Functions  of 
Local  Government.  13.  Of  County  Government.  14.  Of  State 
Government.  15.  Of  National  Government.  15  (a).  Sover- 
eignty. 

Departments  of  Government. 

Sec.  16.  Legislative,  Judicial,  Executive.  17.  Sources  of  Gov- 
ernment. 18.  The  Three  Departments  Illustrated  in  Civil  and 
Criminal  Suits.  19.  Legislative,  Jtidicial  and  Executive  Func- 
tions in  Local  Government.  20.  The  Functions  in  Counties. 
21.  The  Three  Function,  in  States.  22.  The  Same  Functions 
in  the  Nation. 


xvi  Contents. 


BOOK   I.— THE   PROTECTION   OF   RIGHTS. 

Chapter  II. — Of  Rights  in  General 21 

Sec.  23.  Rights  Impose  Duties.  24.  "Greatest  Happiness" 
Principle  and  its  Application  in  the  Three  Kinds  of  Law. 
25  Rights  and  Duties  Imply  Each  Other.  26  Rights  Classi- 
fied. 

Chapter  III. — Right  to  Life 25 

Sec.  27.  The  State's  Claims.  28.  Humanity's  Claims.  29. 
Professional  Claims.  30.  "Life  and  Work.  31.  The  Right  to 
Work.  31  (a).  Subject  Only  to  the  State.  31  (6).  Picketing 
and  Boycotting.  32.  Duties  Conditioning  the  Right  to  Work. 
33.  Society's  Alleged  Duty  to  Provide  Work.  34.  The  Eng- 
lish Poor  Law  and  the  French  Workshops.     35.  Public  Charity. 

Chapter  IV. — Liberty 32 

Sec.  36.  Boundaries  of  Liberty.  37.  Barbarian  Liberty  and 
Civilized  Liberty.  38.  Duties  Balancing  Rights  to  Liberty. 
39.  State's  Right  to  Restrain  Liberty.  40.  "Eternal  Vigil- 
ance." 41.  Constitutional  Defences,  Bill  of  Rights.  42.  The 
Man  with  a  PtiU.  43.  Freedom  of  Opinion.  44.  Laws 
Threatening  Liberty. 

Chapter  V. — The  Pursuit  of  Happiness 39 

Sec.  45.  A  General  Term  for  Many  Rights.  46.  Restricted, 
as  All  Rights  are.  47.  The  Right  to  Work  Involves  Rights  of 
Property  and  Exchange.  47  (a).  Limited,  like  All  Other 
Rights.  48.  The  Rights  to  Work,  to  Property  and  of  Ex- 
change Involve  Rights  to  Contract  49.  and  to  Reputation. 
50.  State  docs  not  Furnish  Means  to  Happiness,  but  Only 
Rights  to  Work  for  Them.  51.  Evolution  of  Property  Rights. 
51  (a).  Their  Sources — Raw  Material,  Labor,  Ability. 

Chapter  VI. — Real  Property 44 

Sec.  52.  Land  and  Sea  the  Source  of  Raw  Material.  53.  Early 
Conditions.  54.  Communistic  Ownership.  55.  The  Feudal  Sys- 
tem. 55  (a).  Why  an  Advance  on  Communism.  55  (6). 
When  Established.  55  (c).  Evolution  of  Hereditarj'-  Feudal 
Relations.  C55  (d).  Guardianship,  Disposal  by  Marriage.  55  (e). 
Domesday  Book.  56.  Evolution  of  Private  Ownership.  56  (a). 
Scutage.  56  (6).  Leases  for  Labor.  56  (c).  Money  Commuta- 
tion of  Labor  Leases.  57.  Land-tenure  in  America.  58.  Land- 
tenure  Similar  among  All  Peoples  of  the  Same  Grade.  59.  Pri- 
vate Property  in  Land  a  Great  Stimulus  to  Ability.  60.  The 
Strong  Man's  Chance  Not  at  the  Expense  of  the  Weak.  61. 
Proportion  of  Private  Owners  Increases  with  Civilization.  62. 
Landowners  the  Best  Guardians  of  Government,  63.  and  the 


Coiiiciits.  xvii 

Most  Thrifty  Citizens.  64.  Exaggerated  Claims  from  the  Fore- 
going Advantages.  64  (a).  The  Right  to  a  Home.  64  (6).  The 
Right  to  a  Living.  65.  Land  Valueless  to  All  but  Able  Men. 
66.  Proposed  Reversion  to  Government  Ownership.  67. 
Landowners   Support   the   Government   under   Either   System. 

68.  Some   Advocate  Robberj",  which  would  Disappoint   Them. 

69.  The  Only  Way  to  Help  the  Poor  is  to  Help  Them  Help 
Themselves.  70.  The  Moral  Arguments — Original  General 
Ownership.  71.  Attempt  to  Remedy  Injustice  Sometimes 
onh^  Increases  It.  72.  Performing  Duties  of  Ownership  Breeds 
Rights  of  Ownership.  73.  Rights  in  Improvements.  74.  The 
Unearned  Increment.  74  (a).  Not  Characteristic  of  Land 
Alone.  75.  All  Schemes  to  Abolish  Private  Ownership  are 
Retrogressive.  76.  Private  Property  in  Land  of  Universal 
Importance.  77.  Rights  in  Land  Limited  like  All  Rights.  78. 
Rights  of  Eminent  Domain. 

Chapter  VII. — Law  of  Real  Property 6^ 

Sec.  79.  The  Law  in  General.  80.  Real  Estate  and  Per- 
sonal Property.  81.  Laws  Protecting  Ownership.  81  {a). 
Damages  for  Trespass.  ■  81  (6).  Right  of  Ejectment.  82.  Laws 
Affecting  Transfers.  82  (a).  Livery  of  Seisin.  82  (b).  Statute 
of  Frauds  Requiring  Written  Evidence  of  Transfer.  82  {c) . 
Contracts  of  Sale.  82  (J).  Deeds.  82  (<?).  Seal  and  its  Effect. 
82  (/).  Essentials     of     Deeds.     82  {g) .  Dower     and     Courtesy. 

82  {h).  Value  of  Established  Forms.  82  {i) .  Registry.  Title- 
search.  82  (;■).  Judgments.  82  {k).  Statutes  of ^  Limitations. 
Prescriptions.  Appurtenances.  82  (/).  Title  Insurance.  82  {m). 
Clouds   on   Title.      82  {n).  Delivery   of   Deed.     83.  Mortgages. 

83  (a).  Bonds.  84.  Leases.  85.  Rights  of  Third  Parties  Re- 
garding Registry.  86.  Effect  of  Fraud.  87.  Land  Differs  from 
Negotiable  Papers.  88.  Technical  Meaning  of  "Estate"  in 
Land.  89.  Rights  tinder  Estates  for  Years.  89  (a).  Repairs. 
89  {b).  Subletting.  89  (c).  Terminability,  Notice.  90.  Rights 
under  Life  Estate.  91.  Under  Estates  at  Will.  92.  Appur- 
tenances. 92  (a).  Party  Walls.  92  (6).  Land  beside  Roads. 
92  (c).  Land  by  Water.  93.  Restrictions.  94.  The  Torrens 
System. 

Chapter  VIII. — Persoxal  Property 87 

Evolution  of  Rights  in  It. 

Sec.  95.  Product  Varies  with  Abilitv.  95  (a),  even  the 
Product  of  the  Lowest  Laborers.  96.  Difficulty  of  Adjusting 
Rights  between  Ability  and  Labor.  97.  General  Functions  oi 
Ability.  97  (a).  The  Civilized  Man  Loses  the  Savage's  Inde- 
pendence. 97  (h).  Things  Made  to  Embody  Thoughts.  97  (c). 
Averages  and  Ability.  97  {d) .  The  Lower  Depends  on  the 
Higher.  97  {e).  ''Finds  Work."  97  (f).  Increases  Product. 
97  (g).  Saves     Waste.     98.  Detailed     Functions     of     Ability. 


xviii  Contents. 

98  (a).  Prophesying  Wants.  98  (6).  Raising  Capital.  98  (c). 
At  the  Works.  98  {d).  Outside  of  the  Works.  99.  Popular 
View  of  the  Enterpriser.  100.  DivisionXof  Labor.  loi.  Few- 
Men  can  Conduct  Large  Enterprises.  102.  Ability  Otitside  of 
Tangible  Production.  103.  "The  Great  Industry"  Cheapens 
Product.  104.  Enterpriser's  Income  Not  at  Expense  of  Labor. 
105.  Invention  and  Evolution.  106.  Labor  Abounds  in  Poorest 
Countries.  107.  The  Enterpriser  must  Pay  Good  Wages. 
107  (a).  Often  in  Bad  Times.  108.  Where  Ability's  Reward 
does  Come  from.  109.  Production  Not  All  by  Hand.  no. 
Destruction  of  Bad  Economics.  in.  Values  Depend  on 
Sound  Morals.  112.  Paradoxes  of  Distribution.  113.  Para- 
doxes of  Opinion.  114.  Why  Returns  of  Labor  are  Nearly 
Fixed.  115.  Why  Those  of  Ability  Vary  Widely.  116.  Capi- 
tal's Return  More  Like  Labor's  than  Ability's.  117.  Ability 
cannot  Waste  Time  and  Strength  in  Grinding  Labor  or  Capital. 
118.  Capital  and  Labor  Powerless  without  Ability.  119.  The 
Rates  of  Division.  120.  Enterprisers  Generally  Get  Less  than 
Nothing.  121.  Handworkers  of  Special  Ability.  122.  Prop- 
erty Not  All  Tangible.  123.  Comparative  Profits  in  Different 
Fields  of  Ability.  124.  Why  so  Few  have  Great  Ability. 
125.  Discovery  of  the  Foregoing  Truths.  126.  Abilit}?-  In- 
creasing. 127.  Suum  Cuique.  128.  Minimum  Wage  and  Slid- 
ing Scale.  129.  No  Lack  of  Opportunity.  130.  But  Few  Able 
to  Embrace  It.  131.  Is  Inequality  of  Fortune  Right?  132. 
Evils  have  their  Uses. 

Ch.\pter  IX. — Property  as  Capital 116 

Sec.  133.  As  Much  Entitled  to  Government's  Protection  as 
Wages.  134.  A  Man  who  can  Use  Money  can  Hire  It.  135. 
What  Capital  Consists  in.  136.  Rent.  137.  Interest.  13S. 
Usurv-  138  (a).  Laws  against  It  Useless.  13S  {b) .  Disappear- 
ing from  Enlightened  Communities.  138  (c).  Hard  on  Bor- 
rowers. 139.  Needs  for  Associating  Capital.  140.  Incorpora- 
tions. 140  (a).  As  Affecting  Liability.  140  {h) .  Perpetuity. 
140  (c).  Stocks  and  Bonds.  141.  Large  Corporations  Not  All 
Owned  by  the  Rich.  142.  Irresponsibility  of  Corporations. 
143.  Very  Small  Corporations  Undesirable.  144.  Why  Labor 
Hates  Corporations.     145.  Danger  of  Monopoly. 

Chapter  X. — Competition,   Monopoly    and   Industrial 

AND  Labor  Trusts 127 

Sec.  146.  Rights  of  and  to  Competition.  147.  Hated  by  the 
Lazy  and  Stupid.  148.  Benefits  Illustrated.  14S  (a).  In  Do- 
mestic Convenience.  14S  (6).  In  Travel.  148  (r).  In  Com- 
mercial Traveling.  148  (</).  In  Regulation  of  Prices  through 
Demand  and  Supply.  148  (c).  Minor  Exceptions.  149.  Evils 
in  Competition.  149  (a).  Suppressing  Incapacity  not  among 
Them.  149  {b) .  Nor  is  Poverty.  149  (c).  But  Wastefulness  is. 
150.  Public    Seldom    Gainer   by    Wasteful    Competition.     151. 


Contents.  xix 

Cooperation  and  Competition.  152.  Capital  Trusts.  152  (a). 
Their  Economy.  152  (b).  Not  Generally  Profitable.  152  (c). 
Their  Monopoly  Sometinies  Causes  its  Own  Cure,  152  (d) . 
and  Sometimes  does  Not.  153.  Property  Rights  do  Not 
Alwaj's  Include  Monopoly  Rights.  154.  State  Control.  154  (a). 
By  Anti-trvist  Laws.  154  (6).  Capital  Trusts  and  Labor 
Trusts.  154  (c).  By  Fixing  Prices.  154  {d).  By  Eminent 
Domain.  154  {e).  Danger  of  Government  Tyranny.  155. 
Effect  of  Great  Aggregations  of  Capital  on  Legislation.  156. 
Socialism  as  a  Remedy.  157.  The  Only  Real  Remedies. 
157  (a).  An  Illustration. 

Chapter  XI. — Rights  in  Natural  Monopolies 144 

Sec.  158.  Some  Things  are  Inevitably  Monopolies.  158  (a). 
But  the  Earth  Not  One  of  Them.  159.  Why  Railroads  are 
Apt  to  be  Monopolies.  159  (a).  Why  They  Need  Government 
Authorization,  159  (i>).  and  should  Pay  for  It.  159  (c).  So 
with  Other  Facilities.  160.  Those  in  America  Being  Generally 
Grabbed  by  the  Politicians.  161.  Should  Not  be  Sold  Out- 
right. 162.  How  Natural  Monopolies  Become  Personal  Prop- 
erty . 

Chapter  XII. — The  Law  of  Rights  in  Personal  Prop- 
erty     148 

Sec.  163.  Differences  between  Law  of  Personal  Property  and 
that  of  Land.  163  (a).  Personal  Property  Seldom  Registered. 
163  (b).  Important  Kinds  Passed  by  Endorsement.  163  (c). 
Can  Take  One's  Own  Wherever  Found,  and  in  Some  Cases  by 
Force.  163  (d) .  Ownership  of  Some  Kinds  can  be  Lost  With- 
out Neglect.  163  (e).  Can  be  Mortgaged  without  Registry  if  in 
Mortgagee's  Possession.  164.  Pledges.  165.  Personal  Prop- 
erty the  Great  Field  of  Contract. 

Chapter  XIII. — Contract 152 

As  an  Element  in  Civilization. 

Sec.  166.  Difference  between  Contract  Rights  and  Property 
Rights.  167.  Contract,  Agreement,  Bargain.  168.  Contract 
Possible  Only  to  the  Free.  169.  Contract  an  Education  in 
Freedoin.  170.  Under  Contract,  only  Able  Employers  can  Se- 
cure Labor.  171.  Status  versus  Contract.  172.  Contract, 
Freedom  and  Private  Property  All  Evolve  Together.  173.  As 
They  Evolve,  Militarism  Declines.  174.  Because  it  is  a  Form 
of  Status.  175.  Fighting  versus  Producing.  175  (a).  Illus- 
trated in  Nations  of  To-day.  176.  Why  Private  Property  is 
Essential  to  Advance  beyond  Status.  177.  Civilization  and 
Trade  Go  Together.  178.  Breaking  Contracts  and  Advocating 
Socialism. 


XX 


Contents. 


Chapter  XIV. — General  Law  of  Contract 159 

Sec.  179.  Essentials  of  a  Contract.  179  (a).  Illustrations. 
180.  Natural  Love  and  Affection.  iSi.  Promises  and  Con- 
tracts. 182.  Legal  Fiction.  183.  Mutuality  in  Contracts. 
184.  Law  and  Religion.  185.  Justice  and  Honor.  1S6.  Con- 
tracts the  Law  will  not  Enforce.  186  (a).  For  Wrong-doing. 
186  (6).  Wagers.  186  (c).  "The  Act  of  God  or  the  Public 
Enemy."  187.  Law  Imposes  Self-preservation.  188.  But  can- 
not Furnish  Wisdom.  189.  Contracts  which  the  Law  Assumes. 
190.  Estoppel.  191.  Carelessness  and  Fraud.  192.  Fraud 
Never  Defined.  193.  Statutes  of  Limitations  Again.  194. 
Force  Vitiates  Contract.  "195.  Courts  Needed  against  Ignor- 
ance as  much  as  against  Fraud.  195  (a).  Illustrated  in  Con- 
fusion, Construction  and  Friendly  Suits.  196.  Contracts  when 
Parties  do  not  Meet.      197.  The  Law  is  an  Evolution. 

Chapter  XV. — Law  of  Contracts  Concerning  Personal 

Property 173 

Sec.  198.  Sale  and  Deliver^',  198  (a),  as  Generally  Affected 
by  the  Statute  of  Frauds,  198  (b) .  by  Part  Payment.  198  (c). 
Prior  Lien.  199.  No  One  can  Sell  More  Title  than  He  Has. 
200.  Possession  and  Ownership.  201.  Owner  must  not  Secure 
Possession  by  Force.  202.  Delivery  and  Acceptance  Com- 
plete Ownership.  202  (a).  Delivery  to  Agent  or  Carrier  Good. 
203.  Conditional  Sale.  204.  Option.  205.  When  Defects  must 
be  Disclosed.  206.  Warranty.  207.  Suretyship.  208.  Insur- 
ance. 209.  Bailments  209  (a),  on  Different  Kinds  of  Goods. 
209  (6).  "Common  Carrier"  Defined.  209  (c).  Limiting  Lia- 
bility without  Contract.  209  (d).  Bill-of-Lading.  209  (e). 
Hiring.      209  (/).  The    Law-  does   not    Require    Impossibilities. 

209  (g).  Bailment  without  Consideration.  209  (li).  Liability 
of  Innkeepers.  209  (z).  Pledge.  209  (j).  General  Principle  of 
Liability  of  Bailees.      210.  Tender.     210  (a).   Kinds  of  Money  in. 

210  (6).  Determined  by  Congress.  211.  Contractual  Disabili- 
ties. 212.  Some  Limits  of  Quantum  Valebat.  212  (a).  En- 
richment.    213.  The  Law  Protects  the  Weak. 

Chapter  XVI. — Law  of  Contracts  for  Personal  Rela- 
tions     190 

Sec.  214.  Agency.  214  (a).  Authorized  Acts  Bind  Principal. 
214  (6).  Agent  Liable  for  Exceeding  his  Authority.  214  (c). 
Principal  Bound  Also  by  Acts  Third  Party  has  Good  Reason 
to  Believe  Authorized.  214  (d).  Agency  through  Necessity. 
214  (c).  Agent  cannot  Make  any  Profit  for  Himself.  214  (/). 
The  Superior  is  Generally  Liable,  214  (g).  even  for  Wrong 
Done  in  Course  of  Routine  Duties,  214  {h) .  which  Justice  to 
the  Sufferer  Generally  Requires.  214  (t).  Both  Principal  and 
Agent  Liable  in  Wrong-doing.  214  (j).  Classes  of  Agents. 
215.  Partnership.     216.  Service.     216  (o).  Discharge  for  Cause 


Contents. 


XXI 


Stops  Pay  for  Rest  of  Term.  216  {h).  Discharge  without 
Cause,  or  Leaving  for  Cause,  does  not.  216  (c).  Both  Bound 
for  the  Entire  Term.      217.   Remedies  for  Broken  Contracts. 

Chapter  XVII. — Law  of  Some  Quasi-Contractual  Re- 
lations       igg 

Sec.  218.  Trusteeship  in  General.  219.  Safeguards.  220. 
Assignees  of  Bankrupts.  220  (a).  Justice  of  Discharging 
Bankrupts.  221.  Administrators.  Devolution  of  Intestate  Es- 
tates. 221  (a).  Rights  of  Relatives  of  Intestates.  222.  Execu- 
tors. Wills.  222  (a).  Who  cannot  Make  Wills.  222  {b).  Re- 
strictions on  Alienation.  222  (c).  Devises  for  Educational  or 
Charitable  Uses.  223.  Guardianship.  224.  Need  of  Probate 
Courts.  225.  Trustees  for  Defectives.  226.  Court  Supervision 
of  Trustees  in  General. 

Chapter XVIII. — Personal  Property 208 

Schemes  for  Distributing  It  More  Evenly. 

(I)   Scamping,   Forbidding   Work,   Destroying     Product,   Anar- 
chism, Communism. 

Sec.  227.  Poverty  has  No  Causes.  228.  Scamping  Work. 
228  (a).  Keeps  the  Scamper  Out  of  Jobs.  228  (6).  He  Gets 
Only  One  Profit  but  Pays  Many.  228  (c).  Cannot  Long  Re- 
ceive Good  Wages  unless  Earned.  Piecework.  229.  Pretend- 
ing and  Forbidding  Labor.  230.  "Shutting  Down"  a  Different 
Case.  231.  Destruction  as  an  Aid  to  Production.  232.  Only 
One  Class  of  Many  Schemes  to  Get  Something  Out  of  Nothing. 

233.  People    Generally    Consider    Only    Income,    Not    Outgo. 

234.  Anarchism.  234  (a).  Badness  of  Present  Laws  does  not 
Prove     Goodness     of     Proposed     Changes.      235.  Communism. 

235  (a).  $1,200  Apiece.  235  (b).  Sudden  Wealth  a  Doubtful 
Blessing.  235  (c).  Wotild  Last  but  a  Little  While,  235  (d) . 
and  then  there  would  be  Less  than  Now.  235  (<?).  Meaning- 
less without  Robbery.  235  (/).  Many  Kinds  of  Wealth  cannot 
be  Divided  without  Being  Destroyed. 

Chapter  XIX. — Personal  Property  (Continued) 225 

Schemes  for  Distributing  It  More  Evenly  (Continued). 

(II)   Socialism. 

Sec.  236.  Socialism.  236  (a).  Wages  could  not  Rise.  236  (6). 
Impracticability  of  Political  Management.  236  (c) .  Losses  to 
Education,    Charity    and    Liberty.      236  (d).  Forcing    Ability. 

236  (e).  The  Argument  from  Experience.  236  (/).  Can  be 
Undertaken  when  Government  is  its  Own  Customer.  236  (g). 
Private  Initiative  Essential  to  Variety.  236  (h) .  General  Gov- 
ernment Production  Attacks  Property,  Contract  and  Charity. 
236  (i).  Futility  of  Attempting  It  by  Eminent  Domain.     236  (/). 


xxii  .  ContcvAs. 

Effect  on  Laborers.  236  {k).  A  Premium  on  Laziness.  236  (/). 
Would  Destroy  Freedom.  236  {m).  The  Unemployed.  237. 
Names  Socialism  and  Individualism.  237  (a).  Socialism  a 
Vague  Name.  237  (6).  At  Least  Three  Meanings.  23S.  So- 
cialism against  Competition.  239.  All  Experience  for  Indi- 
vidualism. 240.  Socialism  and  Magic  an  Illustration.  241. 
Present  Agencies  toward  Same  Ends.  242.  No  Magic  in 
Laws  and  Names.  243.  Another  Specimen.  244.  Need  and 
Desert.  245.  High-pressure  Progress.  246.  Socialism,  when 
Possible,  will  be  Needless.     247.  The  Web  of  Civilization. 

Chapter  XX. — Personal  Property  (Continued) 243 

Schemes  for  Distributing  It  More  Evenly  {Continued). 

%  (III)   Trade-union  Coercion. 

Sec.  248.  Comer  of  Supply  of  Labor.  248  (a).  Justifiable 
Only   in    Self-defence.      249.    Demand    and    Supply    in    Labor. 

250.  Wages  Necessarily  Limited  250  (a),  by  Demand  for 
Product,    250   (6).    by     Competition,     250   (c).    bj^    Invention. 

251.  False  Justifications  for  Coercion.  252.  Aimed  against 
Laborer,  Employer  and  Pviblic.  253.  Coercing  the  Employer. 
254.  The  Strike.  255.  Conspiring  to  Stop  Work.  256.  Other 
Coercions.  257.  Misleading  Statistics  of  Strikes.  258.  Co- 
ercing the  Laborer.  258(a).  The  Labor  Trust.  259.  Coercing 
the  Public.  The  Union  Label.  260.  A  Second  Illustration. 
261.  The  Right  to  Stop  Work.  262.  The  Community's  De- 
fence. 263.  Society  Organizing  in  Self-defence.  264.  Educa- 
tional Results.  264  (o).  The  Community's  Defence  will  De- 
fend the  Workman. 

ChapterXXI. — Personal  Property  (Continued) 265 

Schemes  for  Distributing  It  Alore  Evenly  {Continued) . 

(IV)  Labor  and  the  Law. 

Sec.  265.  Natural  Law  and  Civic  Law.  265  (a).  The  Law  of 
Conspiracy.  265  {b).  The  "Comer"  Again.  265  (c).  Mali- 
cious Intent.  265  {d).  Labor-saving  Machinery.  265  (c).  The 
Open  Shop.  265  (/).  "Immediate  Interest"  and  the  Sympa- 
thetic Strike.  265  (.?)■  Prof.  Adams' Summary.  265  {h).  Con- 
flicting Laws.  265  (f).  Duty  of  District  Attorneys.  266.  The 
Workman's  Freedom.  267.  The  Law  Chaotic.  268.  Picketing 
Unlawful.  269.  Unions'  Liability  for  Damages.  269  (a).  Mis- 
demeanor as  a  Substitute.  270.  Some  Summaries  ot  the  Law. 
271.  Injunctions.  272.  Regulation  of  Wages,  Hours  and  Con- 
ditions. 272  (a).  The  Labor  Trust  Again.  272  {b).  Protecting 
the  Laborer  against  Himself.  272  (c).  Wages  Unlike  Condi- 
tions. 272  {d).  The  Living  Wage.  272  {e).  Too  Much  Care 
Enervating  and  against  Liberty.  272  (/).  Extremes  and  the 
Medium. 


Contents.  xxiii 

Chapter  XXII. — Personal  Property   (Continued)..  ...    289 

Schemes  for  Distributing  It  More  Evenly  {C ontinued) . 

(V)  Remedies  on  Trial. 
Sec.  273.  Industrial  War  and  Industrial  Law.  274.  Legal 
Experiments  in  Australasia.  274  (a).  Their  Results  to  be  Dis- 
counted for  American  Conditions.  275.  State  Competition  with 
Monopolies.  275  (a).  In  Lending  Capital.  275  (6).  In  Some 
Industries.  276.  The  Minimum  Wage.  276  (a).  Against 
Sweating.  276  [b).  Sought  by  Good  Employers.  276  (c).  How 
Regulated.  276  (d).  Not  Always  Effective.  276  {e).  Recru- 
descence of  the  Sweat-shop.  276  (/).  Exceptions  Allowed. 
276  (g).  High  Prices  Restilting.  276  (h).  Bolstering  up  Needed. 
276  {i) .  Points  to  State  Employment  and  Socialism.  277. 
Statute  Law  and  Natural  Law.  278.  The  Arbitration  Courts. 
278  (a).  Started  to  Prevent  Strikes.  279.  Ineffectiveness  of 
Voluntary  Arbitration.  280.  The  First  Compulsory  Arbitra- 
tion Act.  280  (a).  Recognized  Only  Unions.  280  (6).  Could 
Dismiss  Trivial  Claims.  280  (c) .  Damages.  280  {d) .  Faith- 
ful Acceptance  of  Decrees.  2S0  ((?).  Competence  of  Courts  in 
Business  Affairs.  280  (/).  Effect  on  Strikes.  280  (g).  Spread 
of  the  Courts  and  Unexpected  Activity.  280  {h) .  Both  Sides 
Arranged  Cases  to  Refer.  280  {i) .  Courts  Tried  to  Follow  the 
Market.  280  (/).  Court's  Power  of  Initiative.  280  {k) .  Ques- 
tion of  Overcrowding.  281.  Aspects  in  1890.  282.  A  Theory 
of  Wages  and  Prices.  283.  Mr.  Lloyd's  Conclusions  in  1900. 
284.  Mr.  Reeves  in  1903.  285.  Claims  Continued  Success.  286. 
Judge  Backhouse's  Testimony.  287.  The  Courts  to  Keep  the 
Peace.  2S8.  Details  by  Mr.  Reeves.  289.  Dr.  Clark  in  1906 
not  Quite  so  Optimistic.  290.  Courts  Now  Have  Legislative 
Power.  291.  Laws  against  Strikes.  292.  Current  Law  Pro- 
hibits Sympathetic  Strikes.  293.  And  Makes  Awards  Binding 
in  Adjoining  Districts.  294.  Awards  Evaded.  295.  Hard  to 
Fit  Conditions.  296.  Danger  of  Over-regulation.  297.  Pro- 
motes Centralization  of  Industr3^  298.  And  Uniformity  of 
Wages.  299.  But  so  Miniinizes  Oppression.  300.  Only  One 
Side  can  Pay  Damages.  301.  But  Moral  Sanction  Often 
Effective.  302.  Continued  High  Prices  and  Palliatives.  303. 
Courts  Consider  Cost  of  Living,  and  Profits  and  All  Condi- 
tions. 304.  Startling  Declaration  of  Court's  Powers.  305. 
Supports  the  Closed  Shop — Conditionally.  306.  Political  and 
Class  Legislation  by  Courts.  307.  Curtails  Freedom  of  the 
Press.  308.  And  "the  Obligation  of  Contracts".  309.  And 
the  Right  of  Assembly.  310.  And  Trial  by  Jury.  311.  At- 
tacks on  Liberty  not  Premeditated.  312.  New  Conditions, 
Unexpected  Results.  313.  Yet  All  Admitted  to  be  Progress 
toward  Socialism.  314.  Has  Experiment  Proved  Socialism  at 
War  with  Liberty  and  Progress  ?  315.  No  Business  Disasters 
yet.     316.   Experimenting     in     Prosperous     Times.     317.  Dis- 


xxiv  Contents. 

agreement  as  to  Prospects.  31S.  Increased  Fealty  to  Law. 
319.  The  Equilibrium  Unstable.  320.  The  Latest  Word.  321. 
Repair  as  Likeh^  as  Failure.  322.  Gains  in  Prosperity  may 
Carry  through  Adversity.      322  (a).  America  must  Change. 

Chapter  XXIIL — Personal  Property  (Continued) 325 

Proved  Methods  for  Diffusing  It  More  Evenly. 
Sec.  323.  Progress  in  General.  324.  Diffusion  of  Wealth 
Depends  on  Diffusion  of  Ability.  325.  Averages  Tend  to  Rise. 
326.  Diffusion  Increasing.  327.  "Rich  Richer,  and  Poor 
Poorer"  is  not  True  in  Civilized  Countries.  327  (a).  Pendu- 
lum Swings  Backward  in  1903.  327  (5).  Recent  Reduction  in 
Hours.  3 28.  Increase  in  Wages  and  Decrease  in  Other  Prices 
Come  Largely  from  Capital's  Share,  329.  and  from  Labor's 
Increased  Ability,  330.  and  from  Diffusion  of  Honesty,  330  (a), 
which  Makes  Everybody's  Money  go  Farther,  330  {b) .  especially 
Honesty  in  Government,  331.  and  from  Creating  and  Supply- 
ing New  Wants,  331  (a),  mainly  through  Labor-saving  Machin- 
ery, 331  (t>).  which,  tho  of  Some  Harm  at  the  Outset,  331  (c). 
is  but  Seldom  of  Any  Now.  332.  A  Man  Secures  Wealth  Him- 
self 332  (a),  by  Forehandedness  against  Hard  Times,  332  (h). 
in  which  Prices  of  Necessities  Tend  to  Keep  Up,  while  those  of 
Luxuries  Fall.  332  (c).  By  Cultivating  Ability.  2>ZJ>-  Poverty 
Seldom  Blameless.  334.  Most  Rich  Men  Bom  Poor.  335. 
Happiness  not  Dependent  on  Wealth.  336.  Wise  Philan- 
thropy Necessary  to  Civilization.  336  (a).  It  should  Continue 
on  Present  Lines.  336  (h).  It  should  Help  Only  Those  that 
cannot  Work.  337.  Province  of  the  Law.  337  (a).  Cannot 
Discriminate  between  People.  338.  Benevolence  does  not 
Prevent  Accumulating  Wealth.  339.  Speculation.  340.  Law 
cannot  Regulate  Wealth  Wisely.  340  (a)  Must  not  Paralyze 
Ability.  341.  Duties  of  Wealth.  341  {a).  In  Politics.  341  (6). 
In  Charity  and  Education  or  Even  in  Sport.  342.  America's 
Rich  Men  Peculiarly  Oblivious  of  Public  Duty.  343.  Useless 
Rich  Man  a  "Dependent". 

BOOK  II.— THE  PROMOTION  OF  CONVENIENCE. 

Chapter  XXIV. — Preliminary  Survey 357 

Chapter  XXV. — Money 359 

General  Considerations. 
Sec.  344.  Reasons  for  Studying  Money.  345.  Barter  and 
Money.  346.  Swindling  by  Money.  347.  Kinds  of  Money. 
348.  Qualities  of  All  Money.  349.  Bad  Money  as  Legal  Ten- 
der. 350.  Definition  Reached.  351.  Bad  Money  Buys  Less 
than  Good.  352.  Value  in  Paper  Money.  353.  Fiat  Money, 
Token  Money.     354.  Redemption  Money. 


Contents.  xxv 

Chapter  XXVI. ^ — Money   (Continued) 366 

Some  American  Experience. 
Sec.  355.  How  Paper  Money  Cheated  Creditors,  355  (a). 
and  Raised  Prices.  356.  "Never  Mind  Europe".  357.  Effect 
of  Money  Not  Payable  in  Gold.  358.  Why  the  Silver  Dollar 
has  Depreciated.  359.  Why  Coins  were  not  Made  Heavier. 
360.  American  Remonetization  in  '78  and  '90.  361.  The  Ra- 
pacious Fooling  the  Ignorant.  362.  Who  Profits  by  Light- 
weight Silver?  363.  The  Poor  are  not  the  Debtor  Class,  364. 
nor  the  Class  that  Handles  Least  Gold.  365.  The  Panic  of'93. 
365  (a).  Begins  with  Alarm  in  Europe.  365  (6).  Business  Suf- 
fers. 365  (c).  Kansas  Tries  a  New  Way  of  "Bleeding". 
365  {d).  Hoarding  Begins.  365  (<?).  The  Banks  and  the  Poor. 
365  (/).  Cleveland  Stops  the  Panic,  365  {g) .  but  at  Heavy  Cost. 
366.  Government  Banking.  367.  "16  to  i".  368.  Improved 
Trade  Balance  Supplies  Gold.  369.  But  that  cannot  be 
Depended  upon.  370.  Light-weight  Silver  Money  no  New 
Scheme 

Chapter  XXVII. — Money  (Continued) 380 

Needs  for  the  Future. 
Sec.  371.  The  Best  Safeguard.  372.  The  Safest  Money. 
373.  Paper  Better  than  Light-weight  Silver.  374.  Safety  in 
Large  Bills.  375.  Only  Safe  Silver  Certificates.  376.  Objec- 
tions to  All  Government  Notes.  377.  Yet  Coin  Insufficient 
377  (a),  and  Inelastic,  377  {b).  and  Eats  up  Interest.  378.' 
Good  Paper  Currency  Preferable.  379.  But  not  from  Govern- 
ment. 380.  Essentials  of  Banknotes.  "Wildcat"  Money. 
381.  Essentials  of  a  Sound  System.  382.  Basis  for  an  Elastic 
Currency.  383.  The  Farmer's  Needs.  383  (a).  Partly  his  Own 
Lookout.     383  (6).  Remedy  for  Legitimate  Needs. 

Chapter  XXVIII. — Public  Works 3c,i 

Extra-Municipal. 
Sec.  384.  Roads.  384  (a).  As  Spreading  Civilization.  384(6). 
Evolution  in  Our  Race.  384  (c).  Bad  American  Organization! 
385.  Bridges.  386.  Regulation.  Ownership.  Operation.  387. 
Ferries  and  Docks.  387  (a).  Mtmicipal  and  Private  Con- 
tracts. 388.  Railroads.  388  (a).  Superior  Service  in  America 
and  England.  388  {b).  Italy.  388  (c).  Germany.  388  {d) . 
Government  Operation  in  America.  388  {e).  American  Con- 
struction Less  Thorough,  388  (/).  and  Incidentally  Less  Care- 
ful of  Safety.  388  {g).  Freight  Discriminations.  388  (//). 
Consolidation  and  Competition.  388  {i).  Constitutional  Ques- 
tions. 388  (/).  Taxation  of  Franchises.  388  (k).  Corporation 
Graft  and  Political  Graft.  388  (/).  American  Attempts  at 
Government  Regulation.  388  (w).  Unsuccessfulness  of  Gov- 
ernment Regulation  not  Complete  Argument  for  Government 


xxvi  Contents. 

Operation.  388  (n).  "Labor"  under  Government  Operation. 
388  (0).   Improvements       Possible      under      Private      Control. 

388  ip).  Government  Control  of  Private  Operations.  388  (c/). 
Government  Aids  and  Politics.  388  (r).  The  Conclusion. 
389.   Post-office   and   Express.     389  (a).  City   versus   Country. 

389  (b).  Favoritism  to  Papers  and  Periodicals.  389  (c).  Com- 
pared with  Other  Countries.  389  {d) .  Damage  to  Literature. 
389  {c).  Government  versus  Private  Enterprise.  389  (/).  Best 
where  People  Watch  It  Most.     390.  Telegraph. 

Chapter  XXIX. — Public  Works  (Continued) 420 

Mumcipal. 
Sec.  391.  Street  Railways.  391  (a).  Evolution.  391  (6). 
Municipal  Operation  Increasing  in  England,  Little  on  Conti- 
nent in  America  None.  391  (c).  Need  of  Constant  Govern- 
ment Inspection.  391  (d).  Municipal  Sharing  of  Profits  Ad- 
vancing in  America.  391  (c).  Ownership  in  America.  391  (/). 
Argtiment  for  Municipal  Operation.  391  (g).  American  and 
European  Conditions.  391  Qt).  Glasgow.  391  (/)•  Great  Brit- 
ain versus  America.  391  {f).  Nashville.  391  (k).  Rochester. 
391  (/).  The  "Increment"  in  Franchises.  391  (m).  Should  be 
Leased  but  not  Sold,  and  be  under  "One  Management.  391  (n). 
Rates  of  Fare.  391  (o).  Deteriorating  Private  Service  may 
Compel  Municipal  Experiment.  391  (p).  Some  Other  Ex- 
periments Desirable  First.  392.  Waterworks.  392  (o).  Why 
Fit  for  Municipalization.  392  (6).  Health  Questions.  392  (c). 
Municipal  Management  Naturally  Wasteful.  393.  Lighting. 
393  (a).  Craves  Municipalization  Less  than  Water.  393  (6). 
Cheapened  by  It  in  Some  Places  in  Europe.  393  (c).  American 
Reports  Unreliable  but  Increasingly  Discouraging.  393  (d). 
Peculiar  Case  in  Richmond.  393  (<?).  Other  American  Cities. 
393  (/)•  General  Considerations.  393  (g).  Electricity.  393  (h). 
Electricity  versus  Gas.  393  (t).  Major  Darwin  on  Utilities 
Already  Treated.  394.  Telephone.  395.  Tearing  up  Streets. 
Tunnels  for  Pipes,  Wires,  etc.  396.  Advertising  Signs.  397. 
Svimmary. 

Chapter  XXX. — Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Oper- 
ation      447 

Sec.  398.  Platonists  and  Aristotelians.  399.  Major  Darwin 
to  1903.  400.  Municipal  Operation  Retarding  Development. 
400  (a).  Dogs  in  the  Manger.  400  (b) .  English  Municipaliza- 
tion Obstructive.  400  (c).  Strangling  Private  Enterprise. 
400  (d).  Franchises  too  Short.  400  (c) .  Ownership  Loaded 
with  Operation.  400  (f).  Results  in  Number  of  Lighting  Plants 
and  Telephones.  400  (g).  "Politics".  400  (h).  English  Mu- 
nicipalization Dangerous  to  the  Purity  of  Government.  400  (i). 
Leaves  Out  the  Able  Man.  400  (/).  Reversal  of  English  Sen- 
timent.    401.  Rtissia    and    Socialism.     402.  Australasian    Ex- 


Contents.  xxvii 

perience.  403.  Conditions  Unprecedentedly  Favorable.  404. 
Government  Railroads  Run  at  a  Loss.  405.  Taxes  Highest 
among  Civilized  Peoples.  406.  Vice  of  Statistics.  407.  Tele- 
phones and  Coal-mines  at  a  Loss.  408.  Government  Success  in 
Money-lending.  409.  Life-insurance.  410.  Conclusions  Nega- 
tive. 411.  Laborers  Demoralized.  412.  Some  Fallacies.  413. 
The  Latest  American  Experience.  413  (a).  Omaha.  413  (6). 
A  Weak  Showing.  413  (c).  The  Strong  Man  will  Control 
under  any  System.  413  (d).  Monopoly  and  Privilege. 
413  (e).  Our  Private  Initiative  Better  than  Europe's.  413  (/). 
Democracy  on  Trial.     413  (g).   Some   Interesting   Experiences. 

413  (h).  Fallacious  Reasoning.  413  (/).  Desirability  of  Pub- 
licity and  Commissions.  413  (j).  Monopolies  the  Ideal  Field  of 
the  State  when  Practicable.     414.  Summary   and  Conclusions. 

414  (a).  English  Taxation  Increased  without  Proportionate  Re- 
sults. 414  (6).  English  Municipalization  Obstructive,  Espe- 
cially to  Inventive  Talent.  414(c).  "  The  Government  Stroke  " . 
414  {d).  Municipalization  DesiralDle  Only  as  Defence  against 
Monopoly.  414  (c).  Municipalization  as  Training  in  Citizen- 
ship . 

Chapter  XXXI. — Peculiar  American  Municipal  Diffi- 
culties      473 

Sec.  415.  American  Municipal  Corruption.  416.  New  York 
in  1870,  416  (o).  in  1894,  416  (6).  in  1898.  417.  City  Works 
are  the  Plums  of  Rtiral  as  well  as  Urban  Politicians.  418.  The 
City  Contrasted  with  the  Nation.     419.  Contractors  in  Office. 

420.  National  Parties  in  Local  Affairs.  420  (a).  Partly  Caused 
by  Method  of  Electing  U.  S.  Senators.  420  (fc).  Corrtipts  Both 
National  and  Local  Politics.    420  (c).  Paradoxes  of  Democracy. 

421.  Civil  Service  Reform  as  a  Remedy.  422.  State  Functions 
to  the  State,  Local  Functions  to  the  Locality.  422  (a).  Edu- 
cation. 422  (6).  Police.  423.  America  Alone  in  Confusing 
Local  and  National  Politics.  424.  Vast  American  Wealth  and 
Good  Nature  Promote  Carelessness.  425.  Corruption  of  Voters 
under  the  Guise  of  Charity.  426.  Non-taxpayers  Voting. 
426  (a).  Tilden  Commission's  Proposed  Remedy.  426  (6). 
Local  Suffrage  Rights  Differ  from  Others.  426  (c) .  Limited 
Local  Suffrage  in  All  Well-governed  Cities.  426  (d).  Where 
the  Non-voter  is  Best  Taken  Care  of.  426  (c).  America  can 
Only  Improve  the  Voter  and  Limit  what  He  Controls.  427. 
Universal  Suffrage  Logically  Implies  Individualism. 

Chapter  XXXII. — Recreations  and  Other  Help  to  the 

Less  Fortunate  Capable 490 

Sec.  428.  Museums  and  Libraries.  429.  Parks.  430.  Clear- 
ing Slums.  430  (a).  Possible  Only  under  Eminent  Domain. 
430  (b).  Graft.  430  (c).  The  Negative  Side.  430  (d).  Success 
under  Private  Enterprise.  431.  Housing  the  Poor.  431  (a). 
Community  should  Regulate  It  in  Self-defence.     432.  Personal 


xxviii  Couienis. 

Conveniences,  Army  Outfitting,  etc.  433.  Economy  and  Civ- 
ilization Both  Require  Charity,  433  {a),  preferably  from 
Individuals.  434.  Hospitals  and  Asylums.  435.  Relief 
to     Individual     Poor.     436.   Pawnshops.     437.   Savings-banks. 

438.  Lodging-houses.     438  (a).  Throw  Light  on  Street-begging. 

439.  Labor  Bureaus.  440.  Insurance.  441.  General  Conclu- 
sions Regarding  Charity.  441  (a).  Mutual  Help  Better  than 
Government  Help.  441  (h).  The  Church,  the  State,  the  Philan- 
thropist. 441  (c).  The  Taxpayer.  441  (ci) .  Many  Improvements 
not  at  Taxpayers'  Expense. 

Chapter  XXXIII. — The  Defective  Classes 507 

Sec.  442.  The  Persistently  Poor.  442  (a).  Neglect  Increases 
the  Number.  443.  The  Insane.  444.  The  Criminal.  444  (a). 
Generally  Defective.  444  (b) .  One  Wrong  Step  does  not  Dein- 
onstrate  a  Criminal.  444  (c).  The  Indeterminate  Sentence. 
444  ((f).  Cheaper  to  Keep  Rounders  Permanently.  444  {e). 
Prison  Labor.  445.  Euthanasia.  446.  A  Society  Able  to  Use 
Ideal  Remedies  will  not  Need  Them.  447.  Advisability  of 
Death  as  a  Penalty. 

Chapter  XXXIV. — The  Young;   Education 517 

Sec.  448.  Nurture.  449.  Education.  449  (a).  The  Illiterate 
Voter.  449  (b).  Unusable  Education.  449  (c).  Usable  Edu- 
cation. 449  {d).  Practical  Education  no  Foe  to  Poetry. 
449  (c).  Pauperization.  449  (/).  State's  Responsibility  Estab- 
lished. 449  (g).  Parents  should  Pay  when  Able.  450.  The 
Higher  Education.  450  (a).  Not  Well  Conducted  by  Political 
Pulls.     450  (6).  The  State,  the  Church,  the  Philanthropist. 

Chapter  XXXV. — General  Conclusions  on  the  Sphere 

OF  Government 523 

Sec.  451.  Individualism  and  Collectivism.  452.  Municipaliza- 
tion Increases  with  Independence,  Decreases  with  Police  Con- 
trol. 452  (a).  Increases  with  Good  Local  Government.  453. 
Necessary  Limits.  453  (a).  Effective  Industry  Requires  Com- 
petition. 453  (fa).  Mainly  Determined  by  Natural  Monopoly. 
453  (0-  Tax  for  Commodities  Universally  Used,  Charge  for 
Others  as  Used.  454.  The  Fundamental  Question.  455.  Gov- 
ernment Service  Outside  of  Monopolies  Demoralizing  to  People 
and  Officers. 

BOOK   III.— TAXATION. 

Chapter  XXXVI. — General  Considerations  on  Taxa- 
tion     529 

Sec.  456.  Taxes  not  the  Only  Source  of  Revenue.  457.  In- 
terest and  Importance  of  the  Subject.  458.  Everybody  Pa^'s 
Taxes.  459.  Rates  in  Different  Countries.  460.  Methods  In- 
fluence Rate,  460  (o).  and  Morality,  Prosperity,  Peace,  Stable 
Government,  and  Even  Health  and  Life,  460  (b).  and  Move- 


Contents.  xxix 

ments  of  Capital  and  Ability.  461.  Taxation  and  Civilization, 
462.  Opposite  Methods  Illustrated.  463.  Direct  and  Indirect 
Taxes.  464.  Shifting  of  Taxes.  464  (a).  Need  of  Free  Com- 
petition.    464  (6).   Prices  Highest  where  Taxes  are  Highest. 

Chapter  XXXVII. — Indirect  Taxes 539 

Sec.  465.  Excise.  465  (a).  Taxes  may  Limit  Dangerous 
Pursuits.  466.  Duties.  466  (a).  Encourage  Home  Produc- 
tion. 466  (Jo).  Tariff  Wars.  466  (c).  The  Foreigner  Sometimes 
Pays  the  Tax.  466  (ti).  Early  American  Experience.  466  {e). 
From  the  Revolution  to  the  Civil  War.  466  (/).  Since  the  Civil 
War.  466  (g).  Industrial  Effects.  466  {h) .  Both  Parties  Cor- 
rupted. 466  (z).  Tariffs  Tend  to  Expand.  466  (/).  Protection 
and  Wages.  466  {k) .  Numbers  Concerned.  466  (/).  Gluts. 
466  (mj).  Effect  on  Trusts.  466  {n).  Conclusions.  466  (o). 
Causes  of  American  System.  466  {p) .  Expert  Opinion  on 
American  Method.  467.  Stamp-taxes.  467  (a).  Both  Direct 
and  Indirect.      467  {b) .  Often  Merely  a  Petty  Ntiisance. 

Chapter  XXXVIII. — Indirect  Taxes  (Continued) 556 

General  Conclusions. 
Sec.  468.  Indirect  Taxes  Expensive  to  Pay  and  to  Collect. 
468  (a).  Hard  on  the  Poor.  468  (6).  Stimulate  Corrupt  Legis- 
lation. 468  (c).  Fail  to  Stimulate  Interest  in  Government. 
468  {d).  Why  They  are  Popular.  468  {c).  Summary  for  and 
against. 

Chapter  XXXIX. — Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes 562 

Income  and  Inheritance  Taxes. 
Sec.  469.  Direct  Taxes  Divided  into  Inquisitorial  and  Ob- 
vious. 470.  Income-tax.  470(a).  Falls  Only  on  Successes  and 
Active  Property,  470  {h) .  and  is  Proportioned  to  Ability. 
470  (c).  Like  All  Inquisitorial  Taxes,  a  Premium  on  Lying. 
470  {d).  Violates  Rights  of  Privacy.  470  {e) .  Generally 
Doubles  Taxation.  470  (/).  As  Illustrating  Progressive  Taxa- 
tion. 470  (g).  Discrimination  of  Sources.  470  (li).  As  Equal- 
izing Fortunes.  470  {i).  As  Offsetting  Injustice  in  Other 
Taxes.  470  (f).  Out  of  Proportion  to  State's  Services. 
'470  {k).  Taxation  versus  Benevolence.  470  (/).  Taxing  away 
Business  and  Benevolence.  470  (;n).  Characteristic  of  Mili- 
tarism. 470  (h).  Heaviest  on  Those  Least  Able  to  Bear  It. 
470  (o).  Approved  Only  as  a  Necessity.  471.  Inheritance- 
taxes.  471  (a).  Collateral  not  Very  Objectionable.  471  {b). 
Conclusions. 

Chapter  XL. — Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes  (Continued).  .573 
Personal-Property  Tax. 
Sec.   472.   Personal-property    Taxes.     472  (a).  Uncertain    of 
Diffusion.     472    (6).  Tend   to   Doiible   Taxation.     472    (c).  Ef- 


XXX    '  Contents. 

feet  on  Prosperity.  472  (d).  Personal  Property  Hard  to  Find 
or  Appraise.  472  (e).  Views  of  Authorities  and  Operation  of 
Natural  Laws.  472  (/).  Showing  of  Statistics.  472  (g).  "'Pub- 
licity" a  Foolish  Means  toward  a  Foolish  End.  472  (/z). 
"Homogeneity"  Fallacy.  472  (i).  Effect  on  Corporations. 
472  {]).  Cause  of  Prejudice.  472  {k).  As  Affecting  Franchise 
and  Non-franchise  Corporations. 

Chapter  XLI. — Obvious  Direct  Taxes 586 

I.  Tlie  Realty-Taxes  in  General. 
Sec.  473.  Objections  to  Realty-taxes.  473  (a).  Their  His- 
tory. 473  {h).  Incidental  to  High  Civilization.  473  (c).  Ques- 
tion of  Diffusion.  473  {d) .  Views  of  Economists.  473  (<?). 
Fact  versus  Theory.  473  (/).  Effects  on  Producers.  473  {g). 
Stimulate  Production.  473  (It).  Sure  to  be  Paid,  473  (/). 
and  Easy  to  Assess,  473  (;').  and  Cheapest  to  Collect.  473  (k). 
All  Owners  must  Always  Pay  Part  of  It.  473  (/).  Summary 
for  and  against  the  Real-estate  Tax.  474.  Real  Estate  under 
Poor  Government.  475.  Opinion  of  the  Fathers.  476.  Equal- 
ization.    476  (a).  Remedies  Proposed. 

II.  Varieties  of  Realty-Taxes. 
477.  Realty-tax,  Single  Tax,  Separated  Tax,  Appropriation- 
tax.  478.  The  Single  Tax.  478.(0).  Locke's  Theory.  478  {h). 
Walpole's.  478  (c).  Diffusion  on  Different  Grades  of  Property. 
478  {d).  Local  Option  in  Taxation.  478  {e).  Effect  of  Single 
Tax  Suddenly  Imposed.  478  (/).  Experience.  479.  Separated 
Tax  on  Land  Exclusive  of  Improvements.  479  (a).  Buildings 
Diffuse  Taxes  More  Readily  than  Land.  479  (6).  Nevertheless 
Separated  Tax  Encourages  Improvement.  480.  Appropriation- 
tax. 

III.  Rental-Value  Tax. 

481.  Rental-value  Tax  is  on  Consumption.  481  (a).  Not  a 
Real-estate  Tax.  48 1  {b).  Not  Double  Taxation.  481  (c)_ 
Should  be  on  One  Residence  Only.     481  {d).  Shifting. 

IV.  Franchise-Tax. 

482.  Has  the  Characteristics  of  a  Real-estate  Tax. 

Chapter  XLII. — Double  Taxation 608 

Sec.  483.  Taxation  of  Mortgages.  483(a).  Mortgage  a  Debt, 
not  a  Value,  483  (6).  and  Value  Alone  should  be  Taxed.  483  (c). 
Mortgagor  Generally  Pays  Tax  Indirectly.  4S3  (cf).  Mortgage 
not  Properly  Real  Estate.  483  (r).  In  Different  States. 
483  (/).  Letting  Mortgagor  Pay  Mortgagee's  Tax.  483  (g). 
Conclusion.  484.  Why  Tax  Mortgages  and  not  Notes?  485. 
Tax  All  Recorded  Liens  "at  the  Source",  and  Deduct  Them 
from  Value  of  Property.  4S6.  Multiplied  Taxation,  Especially 
bv  Excises. 


Contents.  xxxi 

Chapter  XLIII. — Summary  and  Conclusions  on  Taxa- 
tion    615 

Sec.  487.  Perfect  Taxation  not  for  Imperfect  People.  488. 
Vampire-taxes  Needed  Now.  48S  (a).  The  Rental-value  Tax 
may  Ultimately  Replace  Them.  489.  Inquisition-taxes  In- 
tolerable. 490.  The  Remote  Ideal.  490  (a).  Nature  Pays 
Some  Taxes,  490  {b).  and  can  Pay  All.  490  (c).  A  Question- 
able Objection.  490  (d).  The  Future  of  Taxation.  490  (c) .  No 
Hardship  to  Landowners.  490  (/).  Amortization.  490  (g).  A 
Boon  to  the  Poor.  490  (/;)•  How  to  Include  All  Citizens.  491. 
Causes  of  Delay.  491  (a).  Ignorance  and  Self-seeking.  491  (6). 
In  the  U.S.  Constitution. 

Chapter  XLIV. — General  Summary  and  Conclusions.  .  624 
Sec.  492.  General  Conclusions  regarding  the  Civic  Relations. 
493.  The  Questions  for  Experts.  494.  Evolution  of  tne  Civic 
Relations,  494  (a),  and  oi  z,  er  Problems.  494  {b).  Rapid  Ac- 
cumulation of  Nostrums.  495.  The  Labor  Trust.  496.  The 
Labor  Question  a  Real  Question  for  Real  Reason.  497.  Ag- 
gression Begets  Aggression.  497  (a).  Evolution  of  Vices  in 
Government.  49S.  Improve  Suffrage.  499  Evolution  not  All 
Negative.  499  (a).  Even  the  Desire  for  Wealth  Beneficial. 
499  (6).  The  Struggle  for  Existence  Ceasing  to  be  a  Brute 
Struggle.  499  (c).  Wisdom  and  Sympathy  Gaining  Control. 
499  (d).  They  cannot  be  Forced.  499  (e).  Their  Necessary 
Creed. 

Index 633 


ON  THE  CIVIC  RELATIONS. 


PRELIMINARY   SURVEY. 

CHAPTER  I. 

society's    control    of    the    individual — GOVERNMENT. 

Unless  the  student  has  grown  up  where 
,  n  ro  uc  ory.  discussion  of  the  civic  relations  is  more 
frequent  than  in  most  homes,  he  is  apt,  before  studying 
them,  to  regard  them  as  matters  of  course,  just  as 
uninstructed  persons  regard  light  and  air;  and  to  realize 
their  importance  as  little.  Such  indeed  is  too  often 
the  state  of  mind  even  of  persons  who  take  an  interest 
in  what  usually  passes  for  "politics";  and  it  can 
hardly  be  called  rare  even  among  those  holding  political 
office.  And  yet  it  is  certainly  true  that  to  civilized 
men,  nearly  all  that  makes  life  worth  living,  depends 
upon  the  civic  relations,  as  much  as  life  itself  depends 
upon  light  and  air. 

Virtually  all  good  things  must  be  paid  for  in  effort 
and  self-control.  This  is  no  more  true  of  the  foods 
that  the  simplest  savage  must  gather,  and  of  the  portion 
which  he  must  deny  himself  at  the  moment,  and  lay 
away  for  a  rainy  day,  than  it  is  true  of  the  benefits 
derived  from  the  civic  relations  in  the  most  advanced 
communities. 

Not  all  men  have  the  character   voluntarily  to  per- 


2  Preliminary  Survey.  '       [§  2 

form  the  labors,  and  impose  upon  themselves  the  con- 
2,  Social  influence  trol,  called  for  by  their  civic  responsibili- 
and  control!  ties:  consequently  an  important  element  of 

civilization  is  a  set  of  opinions,  usages  and  institutions 
whose  function  is  to  develop  and  stimulate  and  control 
men,  so  as  to  insure  their  performance  of  the  duties 
essential  to  the  general  well-being.  We  shall  have 
occasion  to  touch  upon  nearly  all  of  these  opinions, 
usages  and  institutions,  but  our  space  will  permit 
detailed  attention  to'  but  one  of  them.  Before  pro- 
ceeding to  it,  however,  we  would  do  well  to  glance  at 
the  most  important  of  the  others. 

2  (a),  through  the  First  among  thcsc  is  the  Family,  where 
family;  ^he  civic  rclatious  begin,  and  where  each 

character  that  is  to  play  its  part  in  them,  well  or  ill, 
gets  its  direction  and  much  of  its  development.  Civic 
relations  begin  with,  and  even  before,  the  child's  first 
breath;  and  do  not  end  until  the  last  pennies  of  what- 
ever estate  he  may  accumulate,  are  divided  among 
his  successors.  And  yet  so  unconscious  of  all  the  facts 
just  indicated,  are  even  many  intelligent  people,  that 
it  was  lately  possible  for  an  eminent,  and  deservedly 
eminent,  authoress,  who  had  been  advocating  great 
freedom  of  divorce,  when  asked:  "And  how  about 
the  children?"  to  answer.  "Oh,  I  had  not  thought  of 
them!"  This,  however,  was  before  the  recent  reports 
from  city  police  authorities,  notably  from  those  of 
Chicago,  gave  a  most  suggestive  illustration  of  the 
importance  of  the  home,  in  the  fact  that  an  astound- 
ingly  large  proportion  of  juvenile  (and  why  not  adult  ?) 
crime  and  pauperism  is  found  among  the  children  of 
divorced    parents.  While   the    home    is    generally 

recognized  as  the  chief  seat  of  happiness,  its  immeasur- 
able importance  as  the  very  cornerstone  of  civilized 
life,  is  seldom  thought  of — as  seldom  as  the  importance 
of  the  state  holding  it  together,  in  spite  of  alienation 
and  wrong,  as  long  as  human  nature  can  reasonably 
be  called  upon  to  endure  the  strain.  But  a  full  treat- 
ment of  this  important  and  neglected  topic  cannot 
come  within  the  limits  of  this  treatise. 


§  2  ^]  Society's  Control  of  tlie  Individual.  3 

Neither  can  that  of  another  topic  of  almost  equal 
2  (b).  through  importance  and  interest — the  effect  on 
public  opinion;  civic  Tclations,  of  general  opinion — class 
opinion  and  public  opinion.  Class  opinion  makes  the 
heart -wringing  question  of  who  a  person's  associates 
shall  be,  often  depend  upon  such  apparently  trivial 
points  as  the  color  of  a  cravat  or  the  handling  of  a 
table-knife;  opinions  held  in  trade-unions  extend  up 
to  such  questions  as  whether  a  people  shall  freeze  or 
starve,  with  reason  or  against  reason;  public  opinion 
is  probably  a  stronger  motive  than  self-respect,  in 
making  a  man  keep  his  clothes  brushed;  and  public 
opinion  leads  to  the  payment  of  more  debts,  a  million 
to  one,  than  the  law  does.  But  even  the  colossal 
influences'  of  opinion  on  the  civic  relations,  cannot  be 
treated  here  any  more  fully  than  can  those  of  the  home. 
2  (c).  through  Tlicrc  is  a  third    influence   in  the  civic 

imitation;  relations,   perhaps   as  powerful   as  family 

life  and  public  opinion,  which  deserves  mention,  but 
can  here  be  given  little  more,  tho  it  has  lately  been 
the  subject  of  volumes.  I  mean  imitation — -the  ten- 
dency to  do  the  things  which  others  do — things  all 
the  way  from,  on  the  one  hand,  wearing  cravats,  and 
in  particular  circles,  particular  cravats,  up  to  respecting 
the  integrity  of  each  other's  throats  inside  the  cravats; 
but  on  the  other  hand,  leading  peaceable  people  to 
join  in  lynchings  because  others  do. 
2  (d).  through  The   control   of   the   civic   relations   by 

education;  education,  is  worth  mentioning,  too,  but 

cannot   be    gone    into    in    detail   here,    tho   it    will   be 
touched  upon  more  than  once  later. 

Contenting  ourselves,  then,  with  the  mere  mention  of 
those  four  controllers  of  the  civic  relations — the  family, 
public  opinion,  imitation  and  education,  let  us  proceed 
to  a  fuller  treatment  of  one  which,  while  it  is  in  some  re- 
spects more  powerful  than  any,  or  even  all,  of  the  others, 
is  fortunately  in  many  respects  much  easier  to  under- 
2  (e).  through  Stand.  It  is  that  massing  and  arranging  of 
gouernment.  i)^q  opinious  and  powcrs  of  the  people,  called 
the  Government.     In  a  very  primitive  community,  the 


4  Preliminary  Survey..  [§26 

government  may  seem  to  be  rather  the  opinions  and 
powers  of  one  strong  man ;  but  his  strength  consists  in 
bringing  under  his  own  control,  the  faculties  of  all; 
while  in  advanced  communities,  and  indeed  as  a  test 
of  their  advance,  the  control  is  less  in  the  hands  of  one 
or  a  few,  and  more  in  the  hands  of  all. 

Our  chief  topic,  then,  tho  we  shall  not  avoid  the 
others  indicated,  will  be  the  Civic  Relations  under  Gov- 
ernment. 

3.  Civic  Relations  Probably  the  intelligent  reader  will  have 
'^^fi"^'''  already   noticed   a   gap   in  the   system  of 

exposition:  I  have  been  writing  very  freely  about  the 
civic  relations,  without  having  yet  attempted  to  tell, 
with  any  precision,  what  they  are.  The  omission  was 
not  altogether  unintentional.  The  reader's  own  mind 
has  probably  extracted  from  his  previous  knowledge, 
and  from  what  has  already  been  said,  a  notion  of  them 
that  it  will  now  be  easy  for  him  to  make  more  precise. 
The  word  relations  requires  no  definition.  The  word 
civic  is  one  of  a  group  evolved  from  the  Latin  word 
civis — a  citizen.  All  the  words  in  the  group  relate 
to  the  consequences  of  people  living  together  in  society, 
and  they  range  in  meaning  from  "city"  up  to  the 
"civility"  which  city  life  is  supposed  to  breed.  It 
may  be  asked:  Why  will  not  "political  relations"  do? 
Why  do  we  want  the  comparatively  new-fangled  word 
"civic"?  One  reason  is  that,  other  things  even,  two 
syllables  are  better  than  four;  a  better  reason  is  that, 
tho  our  fortunate  language  is  often  enriched  by 
both  a  Latin  and  a  Greek  word  for  the  same  thing — 
just  as  we  have  "civil"  and  "civility"  and  their  like, 
from  civis ;  and  ' '  political ' '  and  ' '  polite ' '  and  ' '  polished ' ' 
and  their  like,  from  polls,  yet  the  bottom  meanings 
of  the  words  "civic"  and  "political",  or  "civil"  and 
"polite",  are  not  the  same.  The  fact  is  that  when- 
ever we  start  with  both  a  Latin  and  a  Greek  word 
originally  meaning  the  same  thing,  we  soon  get  to 
applying  them  to  different  things.  A  boor  can  be 
civil,    but    it    takes    a    gentleman — a    natural    one    at 


§  5]  Society s  Control  of  the  Individual.  5 

least,  to  be  polite — polished;  politics  really  means 
the  art  of  civil  government,  but  perhaps  more  often 
merely  the  art  of  obtaining  office  or  spoils,  while  civic 
really  covers  all  matters  affecting  a  man  as  a  member 
of  society,  as  distinct  from  purely  personal  and  domestic 
matters:  it  embraces  all  that  political  does,  and,  in 
addition,  law,  economics,  sanitation,  public  education, 
public  art,  and  other  subjects,  all  of  which  it  would 
be  a  stretch  of  language  to  include  under  politics,  tho 
politics  may  touch  them ;  but  government  must  touch 
them.  We  will  then  define  "Civic  Relations"  to 
mean  the  relations  between  people  living  together, 
especially  as  they  are  affected  by  government.  Let 
us  approach  them,  then,  through  government,  by 
the  way  of  a  few  simple  illustrations. 

4.  Government's  If  a  person  going  out  on  a  bicycle, 
functions  illustrated,  finds  the  roads  rough  or  dirty,  the  fault 
is  the  government's;  if  somebody  knocks  the  rider 
down  and  takes  away  the  bicycle,  if  the  victim  could 
obtain  no  redress,  the  fault  would  be  the  govern- 
ment's; if  a  foreign  enemy  in  time  of  war,  robbed 
him  of  his  machine,  the  fault  would  be  the  government's ; 
if  he  bought  a  bicycle  from  a  man  who  represented  it 
as  something  different  from  what  it  was,  in  case  he 
could  not  peaceably  obtain  money  equal  to  his  damages, 
or  make  the  exchange  for  one  as  represented,  the  fault 
would  be  the  government's;  if  he  sold  the  bicycle  to  a 
person  with  plenty  of  money,  and  could  not  peaceably 
make  him  pay,  the  fault  would  be  the  government's. 

5.  Government's  These  cases,  if  carefully  considered,  will 
functions  classified,  be  found  to  illustrate  the  two  great 
divisions  under  which  the  functions  of  government 
come — the  protection  of  our  rights — -as  against  each 
other  and  against  foreign  aggression;  and  the  pro- 
motion of  the  general  convenience,  as  illustrated  in  the 
roads  and  other  objects  of  government  care.  Some 
writers  make  .a  third  division — the  enforcement  of 
contracts — like  those  for  buying  and  selling  the  bicycle. 
But  that  really  belongs  under  the  head  of  the  protec- 
tion of  rights. 


6  Preliminary  Survey.  [§  5  ^ 

Let  us  now  consider  more  in  detail  what  is  meant  by 
^  (a).  Protection  rights  and  the  protection  of  rights.  Every- 
of  Rights.  q^q   ]-i2^s   ^   right    to    the    safety    of    his 

person  and  property,  and  that  people  should  live  up 
to  their  contracts  with  him,  if  he  lives  up  to  his  with 
them.  It  is  the  business  of  government  to  protect 
these  rights.  Of  course  protecting  rights  promotes  the 
^(b).  Promotion  general  convenience  too,  but  there  are  far- 
of  conuenience.  ther  functions  of  govemmient,  which  more 
specifically  promote  the  general  convenience.  It  usu- 
ally lays  out  the  streets  and  paves  and  lights  them, 
regulates  buildings  so  as  to  guard  against  fire  and,  in 
some  European  cities,  so  as  to  secure  a  reasonable 
amount  of  sunlight  in  the  streets,  and  pleasing  archi- 
tectural harmony.  Government  also  often  provides 
the  machinery  for  putting  out  fire;  regulates  the 
liquor  traffic  so  that  a  man  shall  not  be  tempted  to 
drink  too  much,  and  abuse  his  family,  and  perhaps 
commit  murder;  shuts  up  stray  animals  in  the  pound 
until  their  owners  get  them;  looks  after  water-supply 
and  drainage  and  public  health;  provides  public  schools, 
parks,  libraries,  and  sometimes  museums;  and  coins 
money  and  carries  the  mails.  The  difference  between 
all  those  functions  for  the  public  convenience,  and  the 
protection  of  rights,  is  that  none  of  those  convenien- 
ces are  directly  in  the  nature  of  protecting  person  and 
property  from  attack,  or  punishing  for  such  attack,  nor 
yet  of  forcing  people  ta  make  good  their  contracts. 

There  is  still  a  third  class  of  functions 

essential  to  the  performance  of  the  other 

two  classes,  namely:  getting  the  wherewithal — taxation. 

These  three  classes — protecting  rights,  promoting  con- 
venience, and  getting  the  money  for  so  doing,  through 
taxation,  include  all  the  functions  of  government. 

.         We  have  seen,  then,  that  crime,  unful- 

results  orbad  filled    contracts,    and    bad    systems    of   tax- 

Government,  ^^-Qj^    (which    are  worse    things  than  the 

novice  is  apt  to  realize)  as  well  as  bad  roads,  bad 
drainage  and  resulting  disease,  bad  conflagrations 
wide-spread    drunkenness,    are    all    the    fault    of    bad 


§  S]  Society's  Control  of  the  Individual.  7 

government.  Now  if  such  things  happen  very  often 
in  a  place,  of  course  people  will  not  want  to  buy  prop  • 
erty  there,  and  so  houses  and  lots  will  be  sold  for 
very  little.  Yet  this  works  both  ways:  for  while 
bad  government  has  often  made  prosperous  places 
deserted  and  poor,  a  return  to  good  government  has 
often  made  such  places  populous  and  rich. 

,  D        'UT*  Therefore,    in    a    free    country    where 

7.  Responsibility  ^       ,        '                  ,          -r              1                  rr 

for  bad  everybody    can    vote,    if    a    place    suffers 

Government.  f^^^   ^^^   government,    it   must    be    the 

fault  of  the  people  themselves.     But  why  should  people 

suffer   from   bad   government,    when   their   own   votes 

make    the    government?     For    just    the    same    reason 

that  people  suffer  from  poverty  and  disease — usually 

because    they    are    ignorant,    self-indulgent,    dishonest 

and  lazy ;  sometimes,  tho  comparatively  seldom,  because 

they  are  unfortunate. 

Ignorance  leads  people  to  suffer  from  bad 

ment  req^res^"^"'      government,  because  government  is  one  of 

intelligence,  the  most  difficult  things  men   undertake, 

character  and  effort.         ^     .  ,  ,        °  .    ' 

and   Ignorant  people   are  apt  to  vote  for 

ignorant  people  to  carry  it  on.  They  do  this  not 
only  because  they  do  not  know  any  better,  but  also 
because  they  prefer  to  be  governed  by  people  of  their 
own  kind.  Ignorant  people  too  often  hate  to  acknowl- 
edge anybody  as  superior  to  themselves.  It  is  only  as  a 
man  grows  wise,  that  he  grows  able  to  appreciate  wis- 
dom in  others,  especially  when  it  is  greater  than  his  own. 

Dishonesty  leads  people  to  suffer  from  bad  government, 
because  dishonest  voters  can  be  bribed,  or  tempted  in 
some  other  way,  to  vote  for  dishonest  officers. 

Laziness  makes  people  suffer  from  bad  government, 
'because  those  who  know  something  of  what  good 
government  is,  and  what  capable  officers  are,  are  often 
too  lazy  or  too  absorbed  in  their  business  or  pleasure, 
to  work  to  get  good  government.  Many  educated 
people  do  not  even  vote.  Yet  we  have  to  work  to  get 
good  government,  because  there  are  always  many  igno- 
rant, dishonest  and  selfish  people  working  to  secure 
bad  government      True,  it  is  their  own  government, 


8  Preliminary  Sttrvey.  [§  8 

and  they  have  to  suffer  with  the  rest  of  the  community, 
but  the  dishonest  and  selfish  are,  at  bottom,  stupid. 
A  dishonest  man,  no  matter  how  bright  he  may  be  in 
some  ways,  is  always  at  bottom  just  what  Solomon  says 
he  is — a  fool.  This,  too,  despite  the  fact  that  dishonest 
men  often  get  rich  and  powerful.  But  frequent  as  such 
facts  are,  they  are  far  from  being  the  rule.  Many  suc- 
cessful dishonest  men  have  plainly  shown  that  they 
were  miserable,  and  it  is  fair  to  believe  that  at  bottom 
they  generally  are.  A  great  artist  who  had  painted 
the  portrait  of  a  rich  scoundrel,  said  that  the  face  was 
the  most  miserable  he  had  ever  seen.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  such  people  are  poor  (and  dishonest  people  are 
not  apt  to  get  rich)  they  generally  sell  their  votes,  sup- 
posing that  the  money  they  get  for  them,  or  the  favors 
they  expect  if  their  friends  are  put  in  power,  will  be 
worth  more  to  them  than  good  government  would  be. 
Probably  if  all  could  be  known,  it  would  be  found  that 
they  never  estimate  correctly.  No  sensible  man  would 
think  that,  any  other  human  thing  can  help  him  do  the 
best  for  himself,  as  much  as  good  government  does: 
for  government  affects  almost  everything  a  man  does. 
9=  Extent  of  Govern-  I^  decides  whether  every  step  he  takes  and 
ment's  influence.  every  wheel  he  rolls,  shall  go  with  comfort 
or  with  difficulty,  whether  every  cent  he  spends  shall 
be  spent  to  good  advantage  or  poor,  whether  every 
second  he  lives  shall  be  one  of  danger  or  security,  and, 
in  cities,  whether  every  breath  he  takes  shall  be  health- 
giving  or  dangerous. 

9  (a).  Illustrated  So  far,  we  have  barely  alluded  to  the 
by  Money.  money  which  is  spent  by  the  government. 
But  the  government  affects  the  worth  of  all  money — 
determines  to  a  great  extent  how  much  a  man  shall 
get  for  every  cent  he  spends.  If  a  government  is  honest 
and  capable,  its  expenses  will  be  low  in  proportion  to 
the  good  it  does:  so  taxes  will  be  low,  and  taxes  enter 
into  the  cost  of  everything — a  landlord  has  to  pay 
taxes  on  a  store,  for  instance,  and  adds  them  to  the  rent; 
and  so  the  storekeeper  has  to  add  them  to  the  prices 
of  the  goods  sold  in  the  store.       Thus  prices  will  be 


§  ii]  Society's  Control  of  the  Individual.  9 

made  high  by  high  taxes,  and  each  man  gets  less  for  his 
money. 

Moreover:  government  manufactures  the  money,  and 
if  it  manufactures  bad  money  (as  ours  has  done  twice 
since  i860),  a  man  cannot  buy  as  much  as  he  ought  to 
with  it. 

GEOGRAPHICAL     DIVISIONS     OF     GOVERNMENT. 

.Q  r   L  ...  So  far,  we  have  spoken  of  government 

lives  under  several  as  if  it  were  but  One  organization — as  if  we 
governments.  lived    under    but    one    government.     But 

Americans  generally  live  under  at  least  four — local, 
county,  state  and  national.  How  much  territory  the 
local  government  covers,  mainly  depends  on  the  thick- 
ness of  the  population.  In  New  England  and  the 
Middle  States,  the  local  government  generally  covers 
a  township,  but  often  only  a  village  or  a  city.  In  the 
Western  and  Southern  States  the  local  government  often 
covers  a  whole  county,  or  even  more.  We  should  note, 
in  passing,  the  most  striking  differences  between  a  town, 
a  city  and  a  village.  A  village  or  a  city  is  always  a 
collection  of  buildings;  a  town  (in  the  American  sense, 
not  the  English)  may  contain  no  buildings  at  all,  or  only 
scattered  ones,  or  it  may  contain  villages  or  even  cities. 
A  city  is  sometimes  called  a  town,  but  that  is  only  a 
fashion  of  speaking,  just  as  men,  women  and  children 
are  alluded  to  as  part  of  -mankind.  Although  Americans 
generally  live  under  at  least  four  governments,  they 
sometimes  live  under  more — under  both  town  and  vil- 

..  n    \     •  la ge,  or  city,  government,  as  well  as  county, 

11.  Uverlappings  ^'  ,-'°.         ir^- 

of  local  gov-  state  and  national,     bometimes,  too,  even 

ernments.  ^j^^  school  districts  of  a  town  attend  to 

more  of  its  local  affairs  than  merely  those  of  the  school, 
and  really  constitute  additional  governments.  On  the 
other  hand,  sometimes  the  whole  township  is  covered  by 
a  city,  and  even,  in  rare  cases,  it  has  both  a  town  gov- 
ernment and  a  city  government.  Generally,  tho,  in  such 
cases,  the  cit}'  government  replaces  the  town  govern- 
ment.    But  when  the  city  covers  the  whole  county,  as  a 


lo  Preliminary  Survey..  [§ii 

few  of  our  leading  cities  do,  both  city  and  count}^  govern- 
ments generally  continue  side  by  side.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  very  thinly  populated  regions,  something  like 
the  reverse  occurs — the  county  is  sometimes  the  smallest 
political  unit,  and  performs  what  functions  of  a  local 
government  are  necessary.  Then  people  live  under  but 
three  governments — county,  state  and  national. 

12.  Functions  of  Ordinarily,  local  governments  do  (or 
local  government,  neglect  to  do)  the  laying  out  of  such 
streets  and  roads  as  are  too  short  to  come  under  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  wider  governments;  and  do  what- 
ever grading,  paving,  sewering,  sidewalking  and  pohcing 
the  streets  and  roads  may  have.  They  also  punish 
such  offences  and  settle  such  disputes  as  are  too  petty 
to  come  before  the  wider  governments ;  regulate  building 
and  protect  against  fire;  sell  licenses  for  some  trades; 
look  after  the  schools  and  the  poor  and  sick;  grant 
permits  (in  thickly  populated  regions)  for  public  vehicles; 
and  sometimes  supply  water,  light  and  other  conve- 
niences, or  else  grant  franchises  to  companies  that  do 
supply  them. 

13.  Of  County  '^^^  county  is  mainly  an  organization 
government.  for  the  administration  of  justice  better  than 
it  could  be  done  by  smaller  local  governments.  The 
county  generally  provides  better  courts,  jails  and  often 
almshouses  and  hospitals,  than  the  minor  governments 
could  afford,  and  gives  all  its  localities  the  use  of  them. 
At  the  county  seat,  too,  it  generally  keeps  the  records  of 
the  real-estate  transfers,  and  other  important  documents. 
The  county  also  sees  that  the  longer  roads  are  properly 
laid  out  and  cared  for.  When  a  city  overgrows  the 
county,  and  there  are  no  little  local  governments,  there 
is  still  need  for  all  the  more  elaborate  courts,  records, 
etc.,  and  the  county  government  is  generally  kept  up 
along  with  the  city  government. 

14.  Of  State  gov-  Of  the  state  government,  some  people  in 
ernment.  the  cities  are  beginning  to  say  that  its 
main  function  is  really  to  enable  the  country  to  milk 
the  cities — to  give  country  legislators,  who  are  in 
the  majority,  the   chance   to   lay  an   undue   share   of 


§  15]  Society s  Control  of  the  Individual.  11 

the  state's  taxes  onto  the  cities,  and  to  give  them 
also  the  chance  to  get  bought  off  (or  on)  regarding  all 
sorts  of  legislative  "strikes"  against  the  cities.  What 
the  state  government  professes  to  do,  however,  is,  in 
regard  to  justice,  something  for  the  counties  like  what 
the  counties  do  for  their  small  local  governments — it 
provides  a  high  and  expensive  grade  of  courts  to  which 
important  cases  can  be  taken  from  all  over  the  state, 
especially  cases  that  are  appealed  from  the  lower  courts. 
It  also  provides  prisons,  and  often  reformatories  and 
insane  asylum.s,  better  than  any  that  any  one  county 
could  ordinarily  support;  it  regulates  the  roads  and 
railroads  that  pass  through  several  counties;  and  what 
is  most  important  of  all,  it  passes  laws  regulating  per- 
sonal rights  and  property  rights  over  the  whole  state, 
so  that  if  a  man  wishes,  he  can  deal  safely  with  a  neigh- 
bor who  lives,  or  owns  a  piece  of  property,  more  than  a 
mile  or  two  from  the  place  the  former  lives  in,  because 
the  same  law  judges  for  both,  if  any  difficulty  arises. 

All  the  local  and  county  governments  can  pass  only 
such  ordinances,  and  judge  only  in  accordance  with 
such  laws,  as  the  state  government  approves — in  short, 
the  state  government  controls  them. 

Now  the  state  government  itself  is  not,  like  the 
local  and  county  governments,  under  the  control  of 
15.  Of  National  ^-^Y  higher  government,  except  in  the  par- 
government,  ticulars  where  it  has  combined  with  the 
other  states  to  make  the  nation.  In  so  doing, 
each  state  gave  up  to  the  nation  a  carefully  specified 
portion  of  its  powers,  but  reserved  all  the  others. 
There  is  a  pretty  distinct  line  between  those  given 
up  and  those  reserved.  Roughly  speaking,  there 
are  but  two  fields  in  which  the  citizen's  rights  are 
regulated,  not  by  the  state,  but  by  the  nation:  first, 
so  far  as  his  rights  are  affected  by  other  natJons;  and 
second,  as  we  shall  see  more  particularly  hereafter,  so 
far  as  they  come  under  certain  broad  principles  of 
liberty  which  the  United  States  is  to  maintain  if  any 
state  should  fail  to  do  so.  But  these  principles  have 
become  so  much  matters  of  course  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 


12  Preliminary  Stirvey.  [§15 

race,  that  probably  there  is  not  one  case  in  a  hundred 
where  a  man's  rights  are  not  practically  under  the 
care  of  his  state  rather  than  of  the  nation.  In  the  vast 
majority  of  cases,  the  state  is  still  sovereign,  as  it  was 
originally — so  entirely  that  the  terms  "government" 
and  "state"  are  still  interchangeable. 

The  expression  "roughly  speaking"  may  have  been 
noticed  in  the  last  paragraph,  and  it  is  well  worth 
while  to  realize  before  we  go  deeper,  that  Civics  can- 
not be  as  exact  as  Mathematics.  Our  civic  relations 
depend  on  human  nature — the  most  complex  and  un- 
certain topic  we  know  anything  about — and  upon 
human  nature  in  many  men,  at  that.  So  many  influ- 
ences are  at  work,  that  there  are  apt  to  be  different 
elements  in  cases  that  appear  alike;  and  therefore 
such  cases  sometimes  turn  out  very  differently.  But 
investigators  have  found  plenty  of  principles  that  are 
true  in  most  cases — but  true  only  "roughly  speaking", 
or  "by  and  large".  We  will  generally  take  the  excep- 
tions for  granted,  however,  and  not  stop  too  often 
to  allude  to  them.  But  just  here  we  are  met  by  a 
very  important  fundamental  question,  to  which  the 
best  answers  yet  framed,  are  found  to  be  "in  the 
rough",  or  "by  and  large".  A  few  lines  back  is  the 
„    .  „       .        expression:  "the  state  is  still  sovereign". 

15  (a).  Sovereignty ,  at  i      ,      j  •  :>         a 

JNlow  what  does  sovereign  meanr  As  a 
noun  and  an  adjective,  its  meanings  differ.  The  king  of 
England  is  a  sovereign,  and  yet  he  is  not  sovereign,  but 
the  people  are.  The  Czar  of  Russia  or  "the  king  of  the 
cannibal  islands"  is  both  a  sovereign  and  sovereign. 

Our  national  government,  as  already  said,  is  sovereign 
over  the  states  only  in  certain  particulars  carefully 
specified  in  the  Constitution.  But  through  that  sover- 
eignty, it  makes  the  United  States  a  great  and  power- 
ful nation,  instead  of  a  group  of  little  states  on  any 
one  of  which  any  petty  nation  could  impose,  and 
which  would  be  apt  to  impose  upon  one  another.  To 
prevent  that,  the  national  government  provides  courts 
before  which,  for  instance,  "little  Rhody"  may  obtain 
justice  in  any  dispute  with  big  New  York ;    and  it  also 


§  1 6]  Society's  Control  of  the  Individual.  13 

regulates  commerce  between  the  states.  The  govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  as  a  great  nation,  regulates 
our  relations  of  commerce,  peace  and  war,  with  all 
other  nations.  Hence  it  provides  custom-houses,  and 
army  and  navy;  makes  laws  regarding  naturalization 
of  foreigners;  and  protects  our  citizens  trading  or 
traveling  in  foreign  lands.  It  also  guards  the  coast, 
by  lighthouses  and  harbor  improvements  as  well  as 
by  ships  and  forts.  Moreover,  as  it  is  a  great  con- 
venience to  have  the  same  money,  the  same  weights 
and  measures,  and  the  same  mails,  over  all  the  states, 
the  national  government  provides  and  regulates  them. 
It  also  secures  to  inventors  and  authors  the  fruits 
of  their  labors  by  patent  and  copyright  laws  good 
over  the  whole  of  the  United  States,  and  has  arranged 
for  like  security  over  most  foreign  civilized  territory. 

DEPARTMENTS  OF  GOVERNMENT. 

16.   Legislative,  So  much  for  a    hasty  preliminary  sur- 

Judiciai,  Executive,  yey  of  our  various  American  governments 
as  geographically  determined.  Now  let  us  take  a 
similar  glance  at  their  individual  make-up.  Roughly 
speaking,  they  have  these  prominent  features  in  com- 
mon with  each  other  and  with  all  civilized  govern- 
ments:— they  make  laws,  decide  what  laws  apply  to 
particular  situations,  and  see  that  those  laws  are  carried 
out.  Those  three  functions  are  called  Legislative,  Ju- 
dicial and  Executive. 

Now  to  understand  these  three  functions  of  govern- 
ment, let  us  inquire:  What  is  the  advantage  of  having 
rights  protected  by  government?  Does  not  every  man 
understand  his  own  rights  better  than  anybody  else 
can?  Why  not  leave  each  man  to  take  care  of  himself  ? 
The  bottom  reason  perhaps  is  in  the  answer  to  the 
second  of  those  three  questions.  So  far  from  it  being 
true  that  every  man  understands  his  own  rights,  it  is 
proverbially  true  that  no  man  is  a  fit  judge  in  his 
own  cause:  so  one  of  the  most  important  functions 
of    government — a    subdivision    of    its    protection    of 


14  Preliminary  Survey.  [§  i6 

rights,  is  providing  unprejudiced  judges  to  determine, 
when  a  man's  rights  are  in  dispute,  what  they  really 
are. 

But  after  courts,  with  judges  and  juries,  have  deter- 
mined what  a  man's  rights  are,  why  not  let  him  go 
for  them  himself?  Because  it  would  depend  largely 
on  the  size  of  the  other  man  whether  he  would  get 
them,  and  nearly  every  lawsuit  would  end  in  a  fight, 
perhaps  a  killing,  perhaps  a  long  family  vendetta. 
They  did  so  quite  generally  in  the  first  few  hundred 
years  where  we  get  glimpses  of  the  ways  of  our  Saxon 
and  Norman  ancestors,  and  still  do  in  the  primitive 
parts  of  our  country,  and  in  primitive  countries  gen- 
erally. It  would  be  almost  as  well  to  have  the  fighting 
come  before  the  lawsuit  as  after  it,  and  save  the  ex- 
pense of  the  suit. 

To  make  the  machinerj'-  for  finding  judgment  of 
much  use,  there  must  be  machinery  for  executing  it, 
and  machinery  so  powerful  that  the  losing  side  would 
not  think  of  resisting.  In  advanced  societies,  this  power 
17.  Sources  of  is  that  of  the  whole  community,  behind 
Government.  the  officers  of  the  law.     In  our  own  coun- 

try, the  humblest  rural  constable  can  call  upon  every 
citizen  at  hand,  to  help  him  enforce  the  law.  If  they 
cannot  do  it,  he  can  send  for  all  officers  within  reach, 
with  such  citizens  as  they  can  bring;  if  the  resistance 
is  still  too  strong,  he  can  call  upon  the  governor  for 
every  militia  company  in  the  state;  if  the  resistance  is 
too  strong  for  them,  the  governor  can  call  upon  the 
President  of  the  United  States  for  its  whole  army  and 
navy;  and  if  they  are  not  large  enough,  the  government 
can  enlarge  them  until  every  loyal  citizen  is  in  the  ranks. 

If  not  enough  citizens  are  loyal,  of  course  the  affair 
would  amount  to  a  revolution,  and  the  resisting  side 
would  overcome  the  government  and  set  up  a  new  one. 
In  fact,  when  people,  like  our  neighbors  in  South 
America  or  our  friends  in  France,  get  into  an  uneasy 
state,  revolutions  sometimes  start  in  that  way — in  some 
petty  quarrel,  and  spread  until  the  whole  state  is  in- 
volved.    But  in  such  cases,  the  community  must  already 


§  iS]  Society's  Control  of  the  Individual.  15 

have   been   in   irritated   division   over   the   question   at 
issue. 

But  great  as  is  the  need  for  a  judicial  department  to 
determine  rights,  and  for  a  strong  executive  to  protect 
them  and  enforce  duties,  there  is  another  reason  almost 
as  good,  and  in  some  aspects  better,  why  a  strong  execu- 
tive is  needed.  If  the  executive  is  strong,  there  is  very 
little  protecting  or  enforcing  needed.  People  come  down 
quietly,  as  the  'coon  did  when  he  saw  that  the  man  be- 
hind the  gun  was  Davy  Crockett;  and  what  is  more 
important  still,  they  do  not  go  up — they  behave  them- 
selves generally,  because  they  know  it  will  not  pay  to 
do  anything  else. 

We  seem  to  have  found  reasons  enough  for  the  judicial 
and  executive  departments  of  government,  but  in  a 
primitive  government,  there  are  not  even  that  many 
departments;  the  chief,  with  the  men  he  can  get  to 
do  his  will,  is  the  whole  establishment;  but  a  govern- 
ment highly  organized  (or  highly  differentiated,  as 
the  philosophers  say)  is  split  up  not  merely  into  the 
two  departments  we  have  already  found  necessary,  but 
also  into  a  third — the  legislative,  which  makes  many 
of  the  laws  that  the  other  two  departments  respectively 
judge  under,  and  execute.  A  separate  legislative 
department  is  always  the  last  one  evolved :  for  the  priests 
always  make  a  judicial  department  early;  but  the  chief 
ruler — king  or  whatever  he  may  be,  always  keeps  the 
law-making  power  in  his  own  hands  as  long  as  he  can. 
He  still  holds  it  in  Russia  and  Turkey. 

Now  to  illustrate  how  the  three  depart- 
d^pJrtmentfiiius-    ments  work,  take  the  man  going  out  on  his 

trated  in  ciyii  and     bicycle.     He  breaks  his  wheel  because  of 
criminal  suits,  , ,     -'  -  ^    ^,  . 

the   roughness   of   the   road,   tries   to   get 

redress,  and  proceeds  to  sue  somebody.     He  finds  out 

that  under  laws  passed  by  the  state  legislature,  it  was 

the  duty  of  the  men  owning  on  the  sides  of  that  particular 

road,  to  keep  it  in  order:    that  is  step  first — a  law  has 

been  passed.     Now  it  needs  to  be  applied  to  the  case: 

our  bicyclist  goes  to  the  man  owning  on  the  side  of  the 

road  where  the  damage  was  done,  and  the  man  says :    "I 


1 6  Preliminary  Survey.  [§  i8 

don't  take  care  of  one  side  of  the  road.  My  opposite 
neighbor  and  I  agreed  to  divide  it  lengthwise.  We 
take  fifty  yards  apiece.  Your  accident  occurred  on 
his  fifty  yards,"  But  the  neighbor  says:  "Nonsense: 
the  accident  did  not  occur  on  my  portion  of  the  road: 
I  won't  pay.'  Then  the  bicyclist  may  have  to  go  to 
court  to  see  which  man  is  responsible.  That  is  step 
second — determining  how  the  law  fits  the  case.  When 
the  judge,  after  hearing  all  the  evidence,  determines 
that  point,  he  may  decree  that  one  man  or  the  other 
owes  the  bicyclist  ten  dollars.  Then  comes  in  the  third 
step — executing  the  law:  if  the  nrnn  does  not  pay,  the 
sheriff  comes  in  and  sells  some  of  his  property,  and  pays 
the  bicyclist  out  of  the  proceeds ;  and  so  are  finished  up 
the  three  general  functions  of  government — providing 
the  law,  fitting  it  to  a  case,  and  enforcing  it.  Such  a 
suit,  when  nobody  is  on  trial  for  a  crime,  is  called 
a  civil  suit. 

Now  to  illustrate  a  criminal  trial:  Somebody  knocks 
the  bicyclist  down,  and  takes  his  wheel.  The  state 
government  has  provided  laws  (step  first)  punishing 
violence  and  robbery.  The  local  government  has  a 
policeman  or  constable  to  arrest  the  offender;  it  has 
also  a  magistrate  to  determine  what  laws  he  has  violated, 
and  whether  the  punishment  they  decree  is  one  of  the 
slight  ones  that  a  local  magistrate  can  inflict,  or  whether 
his  case  is  so  serious  that  it  must  be  tried  in  a  more 
important  county  court.  After  the  offender  is  tried 
in  one  or  the  other,  and  the  laiv  in  his  particular  case 
is  declared  (step  second)  and  his  punishment  is  decreed, 
the  third  step  is  taken — the  law  is  executed — the  local 
policeman  locks  him  in  the  station-house  for  a  day  or 
two,  or  the  county  sheriff  takes  him  to  jail  for  perhaps 
a  month,  or  the  state  officer  receives  him  into  the 
penitentiary  for  a  longer  period. 

In  America,  the  towm  government,  or 
diciil'a^tid  Executive  sometimes  the  county,  is  generally  first 
functions  in  local  cvolved.  Either  of  them  starts  in  a 
^  "^^^      '  mere  collection  of  farms.     At  first,  all  the 

voters  get  together  to  legislate;  they  also  select  a  magis- 


§  2o]  Society s  Control  of  the  Individtial.  17 

trate  to  judge  in  disputes  and  crimes,  and  a  board  of 
"selectmen  "  (generally  three),  and  perhaps  a  constable, 
to  execute  or  administer  the  laws. 

As  population  increases,  so  many  questions  arise 
that  people  generally  cannot  come  together  often 
enough  to  settle  them  all.  Moreover,  when  there  are 
very  many  people,  they  cannot  hear  each  other  speak, 
and  cannot  readily  count  the  votes.  Under  such  cir- 
cumstances, they  usually  divide  up  into  smaller  bodies, 
each  of  which  elects  one  man  to  represent  it  in  a  gather- 
ing of  all  the  representatives,  and  there  to  decide 
matters  of  government  for  all  the  people.  Thus  a 
village  generally  legislates  through  a  representative 
board  of  trustees,  who  pass  ordinances  about  the 
streets,  bridges,  local  health,  etc.,  but  they  must  do 
this  in  accordance  with  general  laws  laid  down  by 
the  state  legislature.  A  village  also  has  its  own  magis- 
trates to  judge  under  the  state  laws  determining  per- 
sonal and  property  rights:  thus  they  settle  petty 
quarrels  and  punish  petty  offences,  or  send  the  offenders 
to  higher  county  or  state  courts.  The  village  also 
has  an  executive  or  administrative  head  (the  terms  execu- 
tive and  administrative  are  interchangeable),  in  the 
president  of  the  board  of  trustees,  who  is  assisted  by 
commissioners  for  streets,  fires,  health,  etc.,  to  execute 
the  ordinances  of  the  board  of  trustees  (legislative  de- 
partment), and  the  president  is  also  helped  by  police- 
men or  constables  to  execute  the  decrees  of  the  magis- 
trates (judicial  department). 

A  city  government  is  generally  composed  of  legis- 
lative bodies  (known  in  different  places  as  aldermen, 
councilmen,  etc.) — sometimes  of  two  chambers,  to 
pass  laws  regarding  local  matters;  of  judicial  courts 
as  well — not  only  those  of  thg  magistrates,  but  addi- 
tional ones  of  a  higher  grade;  and  a  mayor  with  a 
considerable  body  of  assistants  to  see  that  the  laws 
are  executed. 

20.  The  functions  The  counties  do  not  have  any  law- 
in  Counties.  making  assemblies  for  the  direct  purpose 

of   legislation,   tho  the   bodies   known    as    Supervisors 


1 8  Prcliininary  Siirvcy.  [§  20 

or  Commissioners  really  have  considerable  legisla- 
tive power  over  taxes,  roads,  care  of  the  poor,  etc. 
Generally  speaking,  however,  outside  of  these  officers, 
county  governments  are,  as  said  before,  merely  organi- 
zations for  the  administration  of  justice.  They  have 
no  law-making  body,  but  only  two  sets  of  function- 
aries— the  judicial,  consisting  of  judges  of  courts  and 
their  assistants,  to  apply  the  laws  which  the  state 
legislature  makes,  and  to  record  legal  documents; 
and  also  twofold  executive  bodies:  first,  the  sheriff 
and  his  assistants,  to  carry  out  the  law  after  the  courts 
declare  what  it  requires  in  each  case;  and  second, 
commissioners  to  care  for  the  roads,  court-houses  and 
other  county  buildings. 

The   state     government    has    the  "  full 

21.  The  three  func-   kit" — legislative,  judicial    and   executive. 

The  legislature  generally  (universally,  so 
far  as  I  know)  consists  of  two  bodies,  both  of  which 
have  to  concur  to  pass  a  law:  their  laws  provide 
for  the  care  of  person  and  property  over  the  whole 
state,  and  are  applied  by  local  magistrates,  city  courts, 
and  county  courts.  Then  the  state  has  its  judicial 
bodies — the  state  courts,  which  generally  hear  cases 
appealed  from  the  county  courts,  and  also  determine 
whether  laws  passed  by  the  legislature  are  according 
to  the  agreement  of  the  people  under  which  the  state 
was  primarily  organized  (generally  called  the  Consti- 
tution, 79*);  and  the  state  has  also  its  executive 
body — the  governor  and  his  various  assistants,  who 
see  that  the  general  laws  passed  by  the  legislature, 
and  the  particular  applications  of  them  determined 
by  the  judiciary,  are  executed.  Some  state  govern- 
ments can  remove  local  officers  who  fail  in  this  regard. 
„„  .^L  The  United  States  government  has  the 

22,  The  same  ,    ,    .         ,-,  •       ,•  .1      . 

functions  in  the  same  general  tripartite  organization  that 
'^^*'°"'  the   minor   governments   have — the   legis- 

lative body,  consisting  of  two  houses  of  congress;  the 
judicial    body,    consisting    of    United    States    courts 

*  The  cross-references  indicate  numbered  sections,  not  pages. 


§  2  2]  Society  s  Control  of  tlie  Individual.  19 

scattered  all  over  the  country,  and  a  supreme  court 
at  Washington  to  try  appeals  from  them;  and  finally 
an  executive  body  to  carry  out  the  laws  and  the  deci- 
sions of  the  courts.  This  executive  body  consists  of 
the  president;  his  cabinet;  all  the  national  civil  ser- 
vice in  the  departments  at  Washington,  in  the  mints, 
custom-houses  and  post-offices,  all  over  the  country; 
the  army  and  navy;  the  lighthouse  and  coast  life- 
saving  service ;   and  many  other  divisions. 


BOOK  I. 

THE   PROTECTION   OF   RIGHTS. 
CHAPTER  II. 

OF    RIGHTS    IN    GENERAL. 

Of  the  three  general  functions  of  government — pro- 
tecting rights  (including  protecting  them  against  a 
foreign  enemy),  promoting  convenience,  and  taxing 
for  its  own  maintenance,  protecting  rights  was  evolved 
first,  because,  in  early  societies,  before  some  progress 
has  been  made  in  civilization,  there  are  no  conveni- 
ences to  promote.  A  result,  then,  on  the  body  of 
Law  and  Political  Science  evolved  even  up  to  our 
day,  is  that  it  deals  mainly  with  rights.  The  functions 
of  government  in  promoting  the  public  convenience 
have  been  evolved  so  late  in  comparison,  that  they 
are  not  nearly  so  clearly  understood;  in  fact,  com- 
paratively little  attention  was  paid  to  them  before 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
23.  Rights  Impose  First,  then,  to  take  the  greater  field — that 
«'"*ies.  of  rights,  let  us  try  to  understand  the  in- 

teresting fact  that  all  rights  impose  duties — duties  on 
others,  and  also  duties  on  oneself.  They  impose  duties 
on  others,  because  a  right  is,  of  course,  a  power  justly  to 
demand  that  somebody  shall  do  something  or  refrain 
from  doing  something;  and  this  doing  or  refraining 
on  the  part  of  somebody,  in  response  to  a  right  de- 
manded, is  of  course  a  duty. 


22  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§24 

Whether  the  demand  and  consequent  obligation  are 
just,  is  determined  by  "the  greatest  good 
24.  "Greatest hap- of  the  greatest  number".  What  that  is, 
and  its  application  is  declared  not  only  in  all  religions,  but 
mjhe  three  kinds  ^^  ^-^q  general  experience  of  mankind. 
But  the  religions  differ,  and  so  do  the 
opinions  of  mankind.  Who,  then,  shall  judge? 
Each  nation  has  its  own  dominant  religion  and  domi- 
nant opinions.  In  proportion  to  the  advance  of  a 
nation,  its  opinions,  religious  and  secular  (which  gener- 
ally correspond  pretty  closely),  are  embodied  in  cus- 
toms and  laws.  Of  course  men's  convictions  of  right 
must  be  matured  before  laws '  are  made  to  enforce 
them:  so  there  are  always  moral  rights  acknowledged 
by  good  men,  which  have  not  yet  become  legal  rights. 
As  fast  as  legal  rights  are  established,  priests  and 
judges  apply  them  to  the  cases  that  come  before  them, 
being  guided,  in  very  advanced  races,  by  a  body  of 
Law  made  up,  (first)  of  recorded  opinions  and  enact- 
ments that  have  been  applied  to  similar  cases,  and 
piecing  out  such  opinions  to  fit  new  cases.  The  body 
of  these  opinions  is  called  with  us  the  common  law; 
(second)  of  statutes  passed  by  law-making  bodies,  called 
statute  law;  and  (third)  of  decisions  and  practices 
(like  those  of  the  treasury,  the  custom-house,  and  the 
post-office)  arising  in  the  course  of  executing  the  laws. 
The  body  of  these  last  is  called  the  administrative 
law.  Thus  rights  and  duties  are  declared  and  enlarged, 
and  the  power  of  the  whole  society,  directed  by  the 
government,  is  exerted  to  defend  the  rights  and  enforce 
the  duties. 

Yet  priests,  judges,  legislators  and  rulers  are  human, 
and  the  system  and  its  workings  are  hampered  by 
human  imperfections.  They  have  improved  immensely, 
however,  in  recorded  history,  and,  taking  the  race 
by  and  large,  are  improving  every  day.  The  plain 
way  of  improving  them  faster  among  us,  is  by  improving 
each  man's  sense  of  civic  duty — so  he  will  follow  only 
wise  priests,  and  vote  for  only  good  judges,  legislators 
and  rulers — if  that  is  a  "plain  way".     If  such  persons 


§2  6]  Of  Rights  in  General.  23 

were  always  m  authority,  they  would  keep  legal  rights 
closer  up  to  the  best  convictions  of  moral  rights. 

25.  Rights  and  One's  rights  impose  duties  not  only  on 
duties  imply  each  others,  but  also  on  oneself ,  because  a  man 
°*^®'"'  cannot  justly  expect  other  people  to 
grant  his  rights  unless  he  grants  theirs.  He  can  assert 
a  right  to  life  or  property,  for  instance,  only  as  he 
performs  the  duty  of  granting  other  people  their  rights 
to  life  and  property.  Why  a  man's  rights  are  measured 
by  his  duties,  we  do  not  know,  any  more  than  we  know 
why  two  and  two  make  four.  It  is  a  law  of  Nature, 
proved  by  all  human  experience.  Justice  must  be 
reciprocal — must  be  even  to  both  sides:  the  goddess 
holds  the  scales.  The  statements  of  that  law  that 
have  most  influenced  the  civilized  world  are,  "Do 
unto  others  as  you  would  they  should  do  unto  vou", 
and  "Forgive  us  our  trespasses  as  we  forgive  those 
who  trespass  against  us," 

26.  Rights  The  rights  for  which  our  fathers  de- 
classified, manded  government  protection,  were 
summed  up  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  as 
the  rights  to  Life,  Liberty  and  the  Pursuit  of  Happi- 
ness. There  might  easily  be  a  worse  classification. 
But  classification  suggests  the  idea  of  scientific  treat- 
ment. Now  as  these  rights  seem  to  spread  everywhere, 
and  yet  as  you  cannot  touch  or  see  them,  as  you  can 
a  plant  or  an  animal  or  a  star,  the  idea  of  giving 
them  any  scientific  treatment  may  seem  impracticable 
to  readers  who  have  associated  science  only  with  tan- 
gible and  visible  things.  Yet  what  we  know  about 
them  can  be  given  scientific  arrangement,  and  that 
is  all  we  can  give  to  what  we  know  of  any  subject.  As 
to  "scientific  precision",  however,  of  course  we  can 
know  some  things  more  precisely  than  we  can  others — 
simple  things  more  precisely  than  complex  things — 
things  of  sense  more  precisely  than  affairs  of  thought 
and  feeling.  For  instance:  the  most  precise  science 
of  all — mathematics,  deals  with  the  simplest  things, 
mere    quantity    and    position,    without    any    reference 


24  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§26 

whatever  to  the  infinite  number  of  conditions  which, 
for  instance,  make  the  difference  between  a  human 
being  and  a  stone  of  the  same  shape.  Again,  as  a 
stone  is  simpler  than  a  plant,  we  have  a  more  pre- 
cise science  of  stones  than  of  plants;  and  for  the  same 
reasons,  of  plants  than  of  animals;  of  the  lower  ani- 
mals than  of  the  higher;  of  the  animal's  body  more 
than  of  his  mind;  and  of  the  individual  animal's 
mind  more  than  of  the  interplay  of  a  number  of  minds. 
So  we  have  got  to  be  content  with  less  precision,  and 
consequently  more  difference  of  opinion,  in  studying 
the  interplay  of  men's  souls — their  social  relations, 
than  in  studying  almost  anything  else.  Yet  we  can 
make  a  science  of  them,  as  I  said  before,  precisely 
as  we  make  a  science  of  anything  else,  by  getting 
what  knowledge  we  can,  classifying  it  as  best  we  can, 
and  using  our  system  to  help  us  to  more  knowledge. 

To  begin,  then:  Rights  are  usually  first  classified  for 
scientific  treatment  into  Rights  regarding  Persons 
and  Rights  regarding  Things.  At  first  sight,  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  hardly  followed  that 
classification,  but  it  virtually  did:  for  the  rights  to 
Life  and  Liberty  are  plainly  rights  regarding  Persons — 
as  against  attacks  from  them,  and  as  embracing  duties 
toward  them;  and  under  the  rights  to  the  Pursuit  of 
Happiness,  we  can  easily  treat  separately  those  re- 
lating to  persons,  and  those  relating  to  things. 

Personal  rights  are  sometimes  regarded  as  rights 
affecting  one's  own  person,  as  distinct  from  rights 
affecting  one's  property.  The  classifications  cross  in 
some  particulars,  as  nearly  all  classifications  do;  but 
while,  in  this  case,  one  may  be  no  better  than  the 
other,  we  may  as  well  follow  the  lines  laid  down  by 
our  fathers. 


CHAPTER  III. 

RIGHT     TO      LIFE. 

27.  The  State's  The  right  to  life  seems  too  plain  to 
'^'^''"S'  discuss,  and  yet  the  state  need  not  always 
preserve  its  citizens'  lives,  but  on  the  contrary,  it 
often  demands  them — by  thousands  at  a  time,  in 
war  for  its  own  defence,  and  even  (rightly  or  wrongly) 
for  its  own  extension.  But  even  then,  it  is  the  state's 
duty  to  guard  the  lives  as  well  as  circumstances  per- 
mit—to give  its  soldiers  the  best  possible  care: — to 
give  them  such  officers,  surgeons,  arms,  food,  and 
attention  of  every  kind  as  will  bring  their  lives  through 
war  if  it  is  a  possible  thing. 

The  state  also  demands  life  in  other  ways  than  in 
war.  Under  the  laws  of  most  states,  a  citizen  for- 
feits his  right  to  his  life  when  he  does  not  perform  the 
duty  on  which  that  right  rests.  If  he  neglects  that 
duty,  and  kills  somebody  else,  his  right  not  to  be  killed 
is  gone,  and  the  state  may  kill  him  if  it  sees  fit. 

28.  Humanity's  ^  i^ia^i^  has  not  always  a  right  to  his 
'^'^i'^^'  life,  even  outside  of  the  state's  demands 
on  it  in  war  or  for  justice:  it  is  often  a  man's  duty 
to  risk  it  for  those  he  loves,  and  in  helping  others  in 
danger  of  their  lives;  and  not  only  soldiers,  but  doc- 
tors,  chemists,    miners,    engineers    and    many    others, 

29.  Professional  must  risk  their  lives  to  do  their  mere 
f^^s-ms.  duty  in  the  professions  they  have  chosen. 
They  cannot  turn  back  from  danger  when  other  peo- 
ple's lives  are  in  their  hands.  The  time  to  turn  back  is 
before  adopting  one  of  the  heroic  professions — before 

25 


2  6  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§29 

subordinating  their  rights  to  life,  to  their  strenuous 
duties. 

In  some  countries,  Nature,  unaided  by 

30.  Life  and  work.  ^|^g  efforts  of  men,  supplies  the  essen- 
tials of  life,  and  even  the  young  reader  need  hardly 
be  reminded  that  in  such  countries  Nature  is  an  over- 
indulgent  parent,  who  spoils  her  children,  and  does 
not  lead  them  to  civilization.  Civilization  comes 
from  work,  and  no  country  has  ever  become  civilized, 
and  therefore  (on  the  very  strongest  ground  we  have 
for  any  expectation)  no  country  ever  can  become 
civilized,  where  life  itself  does  not  depend  on  work, 
and  where  the  right  to  life  does  not  depend  upon  the 
right  to  work;  and  where,  accordingly,  the  right  to 
work  is,  to  all  but  those  dependent  on  others,  of  as 
much  importance  as  the  right  to  life. 

31.  The  Right  ^^^  7^^  ^7  ^^^  °^  those  strange  and 
to  Work.  instructive  paradoxes  which  the  thought- 
ful observer  is  continually  noticing,  in  the  countries 
where  the  right  to  life  is  most  effectively  guarded,  the 
right  to  work  is  most  generally  attacked.  One  of 
the  instructions  in  this  paradox  is  that,  as  intelli- 
gence and  the  effectiveness  of  law  advance, the  absurdity, 
not  to  say  the  criminality,  of  attacking  the  right  to 
work,  advances  with  them.  This  may  help  us  esti- 
mate the  reasonableness  and  morality  of  both  the 
American  trade-union's  claim  that  if  a  man  will  not 
join  it,  it  can  properly  interfere  with  his  right  to  work; 
and  its  practice,  if  he  does  not  obey  its  demands,  of 
burning  his  house  and  taking  his  life. 

But  it  has  just  been  seen  that  the  community  has  a 
right  to  a  man's  work,  even  in  the  most  dangerous  of  all 

pursuits — in  war,  and  even  to  his  life  itself, 
Z\(a).  ^^'"•/'I^^^g     when  the  state  requires  either  or  both  for 

the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number. 
The  trade-union  justifies  its  claim  on  the  same  ground— 
the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number.  In  doing 
this,  as  the  intelligent  reader  has  probably  realized,  it 
simply  performs  the  saltum  of  assuming  itself  to  be 


§  31  a]  Right  to  Life.  27 

"the  greatest  number" — the  state  itself,  or  really,  as 
it  often  assumes,  the  superior  of  the  state — a  saltum 
which  we  see  it  repeating  in  some  connection  every  day. 

Any  trade-union  is  a  ridiculously  insignificant  por- 
tion of  the  state,  all  of  the  trade-unionists  put  together 
with  their  wives  and  children,  are  less  than  an  eighth 
of  the  state,  and  what  they  may  think  for  their  great- 
est good,  may  be  for  anything  but  "the  greatest  good  of 
the  greatest  number  ",  as  they  are  constantly  demonstra- 
ting by  stopping  the  transit  and  supplies  of  the  greatest 
number,  and  filling  the  streets  of  the  greatest  number 
with  riot,  arson,  bloodshed  and  murder. 

Probably  every  war  has  been  based  on  some  similar 
perversion  of  logic.  Over  this  one,  here  and  there  in 
America,  civil  war  has  been  for  some  'time  cropping 
out  in  little  skirmishes  between  unionists  and  their 
attendant  hoodlums  on  one  side,  and  the  militia — 
sometimes  even  the  army — on  the  other;  and  there 
are  sober  judges  who  look  for  an  increase  of  it.  Even 
the  greatest  philosopher  of  our  time — and  perhaps 
of  any  time,  as  he  had  more  experience  behind  him 
than  any  previous  philosopher — thought  that  the 
fallacy  we  have  been  treating,  and  the  others  vaguely 
grouped  with  it  under  various  vague  names  (one  of 
which  vague  names  is  socialism),  will  eventually  pre- 
vail in  their  chronic  war  with  intelligence;  that  the 
victory  will  be  the  greatest  disaster  so  far  experienced 
by  mankind;  and  that  the  first  step  toward  recovery 
will  be  military  despotism.  But  Spencer's  unsurpassed, 
perhaps  unequalled,  greatness,  was  in  the  impartial 
grouping  of  passionless  facts — a  purely  intellectual 
process,  where  there  was  little  room  for  the  bias  of 
temperament.  This  pessimistic  prophecy  of  his,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  it  dealt  with  a  relatively  small 
group  of  facts,  found  every  one  of  them  hot  with  con- 
troversy; and  the  interpretation  of  them  was  that 
of  an  old  and  lonely  man  whose  attitude  toward  life 
had  never  had  the  hope-giving  influence  of  children. 
It  is  not  inconsistent  therefore  with  the  profoundest 
loyalty  toward  his  philosophy,  to  take  a  more  hopeful 


28  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  31  ^ 

view  than  he  did  regarding  this  passion-laden  and 
(compared  with  his  cosmic  generaUzations)  minor 
question,  and  to  find  much  hope  in  the  already  visible 
effects  of  very  recent  counter-organization  and  appeal 
to  the  courts. 

31  (b).  Picketing  The  courts  try  to  guard  the  Right  to 
and  Boycotting.  Work,  ES  they  guard  any  other  right. 
They  are  now  attacking  both  picketing  and  boy- 
cotting, but  there  are  thousands  of  ways  of  making 
a  man's  life  uncomfortable,  and  so  interfering  with 
his  liberty,  that  the  law  cannot  take  hold  of. 

If  the  people  on  whom  a  man  depends  for  business 
or  companionship,  conclude  merely  not  to  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  him,  it  is  pretty  difficult  for  the  govern- 
ment to  force  them  to.  A  marked  case  was  in  1S99, 
when  the  workmen  in  Worcester,  Mass.,  would  not 
go  to  see  the  local  baseball  club  play,  unless  it  dis- 
charged a  man  who  years  before  had  refused  to  join 
in  a  labor  strike.  The  courts  could  hardly  force  people 
to  go  to  see  baseball.  Yet  the  law  has  done  much,  as 
will  appear  later. 

A  workingman  can  avoid  all  this  trouble  by  joining 
the  trade-union  and  sticking  by  it,  but  if  he  is  not  free 
to  join  or  not,  as  he  pleases,  he  has  no  liberty.  It 
is  as  much  government's  duty  to  protect  him  in  this 
liberty  as  in  any  other. 
„„  r.  i-        Ai  Moreover,    when    a    man    claims     the 

32.    Duties  Cnndi-         -r..     ,    ,        ,  ttt        1  r  1  r 

tioning  the  Right  Right  to  VVork,  01  course  he  confesses 
to  Work.  certain     duties.     The    most    obvious     of 

these  are  not  to  interfere  with  any  other  man's  Right 
to  Work;  and  to  do  his  own  work  honestly.  Under 
the  first  head,  the  effort  to  force  men  to  stand  idle 
when  others  strike,  is  not  only  an  attack  on  others' 
Right  to  Work,  in  the  very  act  of  asserting  the  same 
right  for  oneself;  but  what  is  more  ridiculous,  if  pos- 
sible, it  is  an  assertion  that  the  strike  on  hand  has 
not  justification  enough  to  stand  by  itself,  without 
being  held  up  by  force. 

The    other    duty  of    a   man  claiming    the  Right    to 


.  §  34]  Right  to  Life.  29 

Work,  was  said  to  be  to  work  honestly.  In  asserting 
that  right,  he  confesses  this  duty  not  only  to  his  em- 
ployer, but  also  to  society,  because  he  calls  upon  society 
to  protect  him  in  his  Right  to  Work.  Society,  which 
buys  the  laborer's  product,  really  pays  him  his  wages, 
and  has  a  right  to  its  money's  worth. 

33.  Society's  Beyond  society's    duty   to   protect   the 

alleged  Duty  to  Right  to  Work  from  interference,  it  has 
rovi  e  Wor  .  been  claimed  that  society  shall  find  work 
for  anybody  needing  it.  But  th'ere  is  a  vital  difference 
in  the  two  things — to  protect  a  man  from  being  inter- 
fered with  in  seeking  honest  work,  is  to  secure  him  his 
right  to  pursue  his  own  happiness;  while  for  society 
to  find  work  for  him,  is  to  take  a  share  of  the  pursuit 
of  his  happiness  upon  itself. 

A  more  detailed  treatment  of  this  whole  subject, 
will  be  given  in  a  later  special  chapter  on  Labor  Coer- 
cion, and  in  one  on  Labor  and  the  Law. 

Universal  experience  has  shown  that  if  government 
attempts  to  do  any  more  for  people's  work  than  to 
see  that  they  are  not  interfered  with,  people  get  to 
depending  upon  government  instead  of  upon  them- 
selves, become  shiftless  and  lazy,  and  ultimately  expect 
government  to  feed  and  clothe  them  and  do  every- 
thing else  for  them,  without  their  doing  any  work. 
34  The  English  Probably  the  most  conspicuous  demon- 

Poor  Law  and  the  strations  of  this  were  the  working  of  the 
French  workshops.  English  Poor  Law  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, and  of  the  French  public  workshops  established 
after  the  revolution  of  1848. 

The  Poor  Law  of  1782  required  the  guardians  of  the 
poor  to  find  work  for  everybody  who  did  not  find  it 
for  himself,  and  to  support  him  until  they  did.  It 
set  the  lazy  all  over  the  country  to  living  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  industrious,  and  to  raising  large  families 
to  get  the  benefit  of  the  government  dole  for  those 
who  were  too  young  to  work.  In  1834,  England  had 
to  return  to  the  old  system  of  supporting  only  those 
who  were  willing  to  live  in  the  workhouses,  and  then 


30  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  34 

people  generally  became  able  to  find  themselves  work, 
and  the  birth-rate  among  the  useless  classes  diminished. 

A  person  receiving  relief  from  the  state  was  dis- 
franchised. When  this  book  goes  to  press  in  1907, 
bills  are  pending  with  every  prospect  of  passage — per- 
haps some  have  been  passed — to  give  meals  to  school 
children  without  disfranchising  their  fathers.  Old-age 
pensions  are  expected  next.  The  extension  of  the 
suffrage  since  the  repeal  of  the  Poor  Law,  has  inclined 
politicians  to  curry  favor  with  the  poor,  and  similar 
"relief"  will  probably  be  extended  until  new  repeals 
will  be  found  necessary. 

The  experience  in  the  French  workshops  was  that 
men  would  not  hunt, for  work  elsewhere,  but  flocked 
to  them;  other  industries  became  disorganized;  the 
officials  could  not  turn  away  a  man  who  claimed  from 
the  state  the  Right  to  Work;  shops  were  filled  faster 
than  they  could  be  built;  but  as  the  laborers  felt  sure 
of  their  places,  they  worked  carelessly,  and  soon  the 
whole  thing  had  to  be  given  up. 

An  attempt  has  been  made  to  insure  people  against 
loss  of  work.  But  even  that  is  risky.  When  Germany 
forced  its  railroad  employees  to  insure  themselves  even 
against  accident,  they  became  careless,  and  slow  to 
return  to  work  after  being  laid  up. 

The  moral  of  all  this  is  that  there  is  no  way  of  super- 
seding Nature's  method  of  advancing  man,  which  is  by 
forcing  him  to  depend  upon  himself.  Every  effort  to 
relieve  him  of  that  responsibility  has  led  to  his  deterio- 
ration. 

But  human  arrangements  are  not  per- 
35.  Public  Charity.  £g^^  There  often  come  times  of  business 
depression,  when  many  deserving  people  who  are  per- 
fectly willing  to  work,  can  find  nothing  to  do.  But 
that  is  a  question  of  an  occasional  emergency,  and 
not  'of  the  usual  state  of  affairs ;  and  it  is  more  a  ques- 
tion of  public  charity  than  of  public  justice.  Public 
charity  should  be  reserved  for  only  grave  emergencies, 
otherwise  it  does  more  harm  than  good.  This  is 
illustrated    by    the    experience    with    public    kitchens, 


§35]  Right  to  Life.  31 

soup-houses,  and  methods  of  reUef  of  all  kinds  that 
have  been  thrown  open  to  all  comers.  Unless  such 
help  has  been  restricted  to  those  whom  careful  inves- 
tigation proves  unable,  for  the  time,  to  take  care  of 
themselves,  it  has  spread  idleness  and  beggary  among 
people  perfectly  able  to  provide  for  themselves  if 
obliged  to.  That  has  always  been  the  case,  tho  it  has 
sometimes  appeared  otherwise:  for  instance,  after  the 
great  period  of  enforced  idleness  of  '97,  there  was  a 
very  encouraging  evidence  that  of  late  years  people 
have  been  growing  in  self-reliance.  When  the  unem- 
ployed began  to  get  work  again,  at  least  one  of  the 
free-food  depots  was  shut  up  because  nobody  applied. 
Whether  it  was  a  less  attractive  place  than  the  others 
does  not  appear.  But  it  was  opened  in  an  emergency, 
understood  to  be  only  for  an  emergency,  and  sup- 
ported only  by  voluntary  private  contributions;  there- 
fore people  did  not  depend  on  it  as  they  did  on  the 
French  workshops. 


CHAPTER   IV. 


LIBERTY. 


The  right  to  life,  with  its  concomitant  right  to  work, 
in  a  sense  belongs  under  rights  to  liberty.  But  the  first 
two  are  so  fundamental  as  to  justify  being  in  a  class 
by  themselves:  they  can  exist  in  the  absence  of  all 
other  rights,  while  in  the  absence  of  them,  no  other 
rights  can  exist. 

36.  Boundaries  There  are  many  definitions  of  liberty,  as 

of  Liberty.  of  most  Other  important  things.    Probably 

as  good  a  one  as  any,  is  absence  of  restraint  in  the  exer- 
cise of  one's  rights.  This  of  course  cannot  mean  free- 
dom to  do  as  one  pleases:  for  no  man  is  at  liberty  to 
do-  as  he  pleases,  if  it  interferes  with  another  man's 
right  to  do  any  innocent  thing  that  he  pleases.  Let  us 
take  some  illustrative  cases.  If  I  should  please  to  stop 
a  man  striking  a  woman,  I  would  have  a  right  to  do  it, 
altho  it  would  interfere  with  his  doing  as  he  pleased: 
for  his  doing  as  he  pleased  in  that  way,  would  be  inter- 
fering with  her  doing  as  she  pleased — with  her  enjoying 
freedom  from  pain  and  injury.  If  she  were  his 
wife,  and  were  wasting  his  substance,  she  would  be 
interfering  with  his  doing  as  he  pleased  with  his  money. 
But  if  she  were  a  hard-working  woman,  and  he  pleased 
to  waste  the  money,  he  would  be  interfering  with  Jier 
right  to  do  as  she  pleased  with  it.  But  how  could 
they  each  have  a  right  to  do  what  they  pleased  with 
it,  when  each  might  want  to  do  something  different 
from  the  other?  Each  would  have  the  right,  but  it 
would  be  limited,  as  was  said  a  moment  ago,  by  the 

32 


§3  7]  Liberty. 


33 


other's  right.  To  determine  how  people  are  to 
settle  their  rights  when  they  conflict  in  this  way.  is 
one  of  the  things  that  the  state  is  for;  but  if  people 
cannot  settle  their  rights  by  themselves  or  with  the 
help  of  their  friends,  they  should  resort  to  law,  not 
to  fisticuffs. 

When  people  are  living  together,  then,  it  seems  as 
if  the  liberty  of  each  must  be  somewhat  curtailed 
by  the  rights  of  the  others.  This  is  by  no  means 
restricted  to  husband  and  wife:  all  people  living  near 
enough  to  affect  each  other,  must  have  their  liberty 
somewhat  limited  by  the  rights  of  the  others.  A 
37.  Barbarian  ^^^  living  alone  in  a  forest  would  be  at 
Liberty  and  civilized  liberty  to  shout  and  sing  and  fire  his  gun 
^'  at  any  time  of  night,  and  shoot  in  any 

direction.  Hut  if  he  were  living  in  a  community,  .such 
conduct  would  very  ])roperly  send  him  to  the  lockup. 
Under  j)ro])er  conditions,  however,  one  can  shout  and 
sing  or  hre  a  gun  in  the  city. 

The  name  given  to  the  conditions  that  limit  the. 
exercise  of  rights,  is  duties,  as  already  said.  If  a  man 
claims  the  liberty  to  shout,  sing  and  fire  a  gun  in 
the  city,  he  has  the  duties  of  doing  it  only  at  proper 
times  and  places — ordinarily  in  enclosed  buildings, 
or  on  occasions  rightly  or  wrongly  considered  proper, 
like  the  Fourth  of  July,  and  in  places  where  every- 
body agrees  to  make  a  noise.  If  he  claims  the 
right,  he  admits  the  duties  limiting  it.  A  man's  right 
to  enjoy  himself  admits  the  right  of  others  to  enjoy 
themselves,  and  confesses  the  duty  of  enjoying  him- 
self so  as  not  to  interfere  with  their  enjoying  themselves. 

If  a  man  claims  the  right  to  make  a  noise  and  fire 
his  gun  in  the  wilderness,  if  nobody  else  is  there,  duties 
do  not  enter  into  the  case,  because  there  is  nobody  to 
claim  them.  But  if  there  is  anybody  else  there  to 
rnake  the  claim,  there  arises  the  duty  of  not  disturbing 
him  or  shooting  in  his  direction. 

Social  duties  arise,  then,  from  men  living  together 
in  societies,  and  it  pays  to  limit  their  rights  by  living 
together  in  societies,   because  they  gain  vastly  wider 


34  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§37 

and  better  rights — they  can  do  many  things  together 
that  they  cannot  do  separately,  and  because  there 
has  been  evolved  from  this  habit  of  living  together,  a 
happiness  in  sociability  itself. 

When,    then,    a    man    calls    upon    the 
38.  Duties  baianc-   power  of  society  to   protect   his   liberty, 

Ing  rights  to  Liberty- r  .  ^  j     -•         j.  ■    j.  ^i     1 

he  confesses  two  duties  to  society — that 
of  not  interfering  with  the  liberty  of  others,  and  that 
of  helping  to  protect  the  liberty  of  others,  just  as  he 
claims  that  others  shall  protect  his.  If  he  is  called 
upon,  he  must  act  as  an  officer  (17)  or,  as  but  few  men 
are  needed  as  officers,  it  is  his  duty  to  vote  for  proper 
officers,  honestly  to  pay  his  share  of  the  expenses,  and 
to  inform  himself  so  that  he  can  take  the  right  side 
in  all  social  matters.  His  faithfulness  in  performing 
the  duties  government  requires  of  him,  measures  his 
right  to  the  liberty  and  the  other  rights  and  the  con- 
veniences which  government  provides  him. 

We  have  seen,  then,  that  we  get  the  advantages  of 
civilization  at  the  expense  of  some  of  the  rude  liberties 
of  the  savage,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  state 
has  the  same  right  to  restrain  these  liberties  that  we 
have  seen  it  has  to  demand  life  itself  whenever  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number  requires  it.  Not 
only  must  the  insane  and  the  criminal  be  restrained, 
but  the  noisy,  the  indecent,  the  filthy  and  those  other- 
wise disagreeable,  must  be  kept  within  bounds. 

And  liberty  needs  protection  not  merely 
39- State'  right  to  against     the    corrupt,    foolish    and    dis- 

restrain  Liberty,  °  ,  ,  .       ^    '. 

agreeable:  sometimes  m  war,  insurrection 
and  riot,  the  rights  of  good  and  wise  men  have  to  be 
infringed  upon,  even  by  men  as  good  and  wise  as  Lin- 
coln: for,  tho  every  accused  man  has  a  right  to  a 
trial,  when  people  may  be  bearing  arms  against  the 
government,  there  is  often  no  time  to  wait  for  trials; 
and  moreover,  even  in  a  free  country  at  peace,  a 
majority  is.  apt  to  impose  on  a  minority  or  an  indi- 
vidual. Therefore  it  is  well  always  to  be  sufficiently 
alive  to  political  rights  to  guard  against  the  slightest 
infringements.     Like   "the  rift  in  the  lute,"  infringe- 


§4i]  Liberty.  35 

merits  tend  to  grow.     There  is  reason  for  the  proverb 

40.  "Eternal vigil-  that  "Eternal  vigilance  is  the  price  of 
ance."  liberty"  (8). 

But  what  is  to  determine  when  the  state  shall  invade 
the  citizen's  rights?  Who  is  to  judge,  when  rulers  or 
majorities  are  under  temptation.''  Those  are  big  ques- 
tions, and  cover  most  of  the  art  of  government.  Most 
of  this  book  is  to  be  taken  up  with  them,  and  so  are 
thousands  of  other  books. 

41.  Constitutional  ^"  ^^^^  Constitution  (79)  of  the  United 
cic'fences  States,  strangely  enough,  very  little  was 
Bill  of  Rights.  originally  said  about  liberty.  It  seems  to 
have  been  the  feeling  of  the  framers  that  the  principles 
of  political  liberty  had  been  so  firmly  rooted  in  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race  that  it  was  not  worth  while  to  write 
down  many  of  them.  But  when  the  States  were  called 
upon  to  ratify  the  Constitution,  they  thought  differently, 
and  asked  that  certain  other  bases  of  political  liberty 
which  the  race  had  been  working  out  for  over  a  thou- 
sand years,  and  which  all  the  States  then  had  in 
their  own  constitutions,  should  l)e  written  down.  Con- 
sequently we  have  them  in  the  first  nine  articles  of 
the  amendments,  generally  called  the  Bill  of  Rights. 
That  name  was  first  given  to  an  English  statute  en- 
acted after  the  revolution  of  1688,  and  ever  since  has 
been  a  favorite  term  for  constitutional  provisions  to 
protect  the  individual  against  the  government. 

The  principal  items  in  our  "bill  of  rights"  are  (in 
the  Constitution  itself  *)  provision  against  arbitrary- 
imprisonment,  bills  of  attainder,  ex  post  facto  laws, 
unequal  taxation,  misuse  of  public  funds,  and  cor- 
ruption of  public  officers  by  giving  titles  of  nobility 
at  home  or  abroad,  or  by  bribery  abroad;  alsof  against 
wholesale  charges  of  treason,  and  corruption  of  blood 
for  it.  The  first  eight  amendments  provide  for  free 
religion,  free  speech,  free  assembly,  free  locomotion, 
publicity  of  all  government  proceedings,  prompt  and 
fair  trial  by  jury,  the  right  to  bear  arms,  and  freedom 
from  excessive  bails  and  fines. 

*  Art.  I,  Sec.  IX.  t  Art,  III.  Sec.  III. 


36  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  41 

Many  of  these  rights  are  so  well  understood  by  every 
American,  and  some  of  them  can  be  so  much  better 
treated  later,  that  we  need  consider  only  part  of  them 
here. 

A  bill  of  attainder  is  a  mere  resolution  by  a  legislative 
body,  such  as  congress  or  a  state  legislature  or  the 
British  parliament,  to  convict  of  crime,  without  trial. 
This  was  a  favorite  means  of  tyranny  in  the  days  of 
religious  persecution;  Our  Constitution  provides  that 
every  person  accused  of  a  crime  is  entitled  to  a  full 
trial  in  a  court,  by  jury,  and  with  witnesses  that  he 
can  cross-question  and  contradict  face  to  face. 

An  ex  post  facto  law  is  a  law  imposing  or  increasing 
criminal  penalties,  or  changing  the  evidence  required 
for  conviction,  for  acts  that  were  committed  before  the 
law  was  passed.  Laws  imposing  such  penalties  should 
take  effect  only  upon  acts  committed  after  their  passage. 

Free  speech,  which  includes  a  free  press,  is  necessary 
to  liberty,  because  a  government  whose  acts  cannot 
be  proclaimed  and  criticised,  can  easily  impose  on 
people.  One  of  the  first  things  tyrants  attempt,  is  to 
muzzle  the  press;  and  even  in  our  country,  offices  have 
been  given  to  editors,  which  of  course  limits  their  ten- 
dency to  criticise  the  party  in  power.  In  political 
"meetings,  the  majority  sometimes  refuses  reasonable 
attention  to  the  opinions  of  the  minority,  or  the  rowdy 
element  dominates  the  peaceful  element,  and  sometimes 
drives  them  out;  even  minorities  have  sometimes  made 
trouble  enough  to  break  up  meetings. 

The  right  of  free  assembly  is  necessary  to  liberty, 
principally  because  if  people  could  not  meet  to  pro- 
test against  a  bad  government,  every  government 
would  tend  to  become  bad,  and  it  could  do  as  it  pleased 
and  hold  on  forever.  T3'rants  are  all  the  time  breaking 
up  meetings,  and  bad  men  often  do  so  even  in  free 
countries. 

The  right  to  bear  arms  would  naturally  be  one  of 
the  first  rights  a  tyrant  would  try  to  suppress.  It  is 
not  opposed,  of  course,  by  the  laws  in  many  of  our 
states  against  carrying  concealed  weapons. 


§42]  Liberty.  37 

Publicity  of  all  government  proceedings  secures  having 
all  laws  debated  and  passed  in  public,  so  that  the 
people  may  know  the  reasons  for  and  against,  and 
bring  their  opinion  and  the  influence  of  the  press  to 
bear  on  the  law-makers;  and  may  also  know  which 
men  vote  for  good  laws,  and  which  for  bad.  In  courts, 
publicity  is  perhaps  even  more  necessary  than  in  legis- 
latures. There  is  no  guarantee  that  a  secret  trial  will 
be  fair,  or  a  secret  arrest  justifiable.  All  the  stories 
of  tyrannous  times  are  full  of  secrecy. 

Promptness  of  trial  needs  to  be  secured,  because 
tyrants  nearly  always  delay  trials,  if  they  grant  them 
at  all,  and  keep  their  victims  lying  in  prison.  True, 
accused  people  sometimes  try  to  put  off  their  own  trials, 
but  if  they  do,  with  decent  courts,  it  is  a  strong  sign  that 
they  are  guilty.  An  innocent  man  can  almost  always 
prove  his  innocence  promptly  if  he  is  free  to  call  witnesses. 

In  our  country,  the  great  security  against  illegal 
confinement,  is  the  writ  of  Habeas  Corpus.  The  words 
mean:  "thou  shalt  take  the  person"  (or,  more  strictly, 
"the  body"),  and  they  are  the  first  words  of  a  writ  or 
writing  or  order  that  any  judge  is  bound  to  issue,  on 
proper  application,  requiring  those  who  have  the  cus- 
tody of  any  untried  [Jrisoner  to  "take"  his  "person" 
promptly  into  open  court  to  ascertain  if  he  be  legally 
held.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  it  is  worth  while 
for  us  to  consider  such  matters — whether  we  have  in 
America  any  tyrants  to  keep  in  prison  any  person 
without  proving  charges  against  him.  But  we  have 
more  tyrants  than  we  always  realize. 

Sometimes  a  majority  is  the  worst  pos- 
a%nl^^ '"^" *'*^  sible  tyrant;  and  in  this  case,  we  have 
the  "man  with  a  pull."  In  one  of  the 
bad  wards  of  New  York,  for  instance,  such  a  man  is 
said  to  have  got  the  police  to  arrest,  and  the  magis- 
trates to  jail,  almost  anybody  he  pleased;  tho  of  course 
he  could  not  "please"  like  Richard  III.  and  Henry  VIII. 
to  attack  prominent  people.  He  is  also  said  to  have 
got  almost  anybody  he  pleased,  let  off  by  the  police 
and  magistrates.     We  can  defend  our  liberties  against 


38  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§42 

such  people  only  by  making  government  positions  de- 
pend upon  character  and  intelligence — so  that  there 
will  not  be  corrupt  police  and  judges. 

43.  Freedom  of  ^^  America  it  hardly  seems  worth  while 
Opinion.  to  speak  of  freedom  of  opinion,  because 
religious  liberty  is  so  well  protected,  but  are  we  after 
all  free  from  attack  on  our  liberty  of  opinion  ?  A  man's 
neighbors  are  always  exerting  a  silent  pressure  to  make 
him  think  and  live  in  their  way ;  and  laws  favoring  one 
set  of  private  opinions  and  industries,  rather  than 
another,  are  constantly  passed  without  people  noticing 
them  or  realizing  their  bearings.     Such  are  laws  dis- 

44.  Laws  threaten-  tributing  charities  or  school  funds  with 
ing"  Liberty.  reference  to  religious  opinions,  laws  mak- 
ing it  easier  to  select  from  one  political  party  than 
from  others,  the  public  clerks  and  laborers  with  whose 
work  poHtical  opinion  has  nothing  to  do;  and  laws 
favoring  one  kind  of  industry  at  the  expense  of  others. 
In  such  laws  the  danger  of  tyranny  is  greater  than  in  open 
attack  on  Hfe,  liberty  and  property,  because  open  attack 
wouldbe  understood  andresistedbythe whole  community. 

And  yet  there  is  wide  agitation  for  laws  to  interfere 
still  farther  with  personal  liberty.  Some  people  want 
laws  to  say  how  many  hours  a  day  a  man  shall  work; 
what  wages  he  shall  receive,  whether  earned  or  not; 
how  much  he  shall  lay  up  and  accumulate;  and  even 
who  shall  have  charge  of  factories  and  stores.  The 
objection  to  government  thus  managing  labor,  is  that 
Nature  manages  it  vastly  better.  For  government  to 
manage  it,  would  take  away  the  test  of  capacity  to 
manage,  and  substitute  the  test  of  capacity  to  get 
ofhce — so  that  a  man  might  be  born  to  develop  great 
industries  and  find  employment  for  thousands  of  his 
less  capable  fellows,  and  yet  be  denied  the  chance  unless 
he  were  master  of  the  arts  of  the  politician;  while  the 
ordinary  politicians  would  be  attempting  the  tasks  of 
the  great  captains  of  industry,  and  not  have  the  ability 
to  carry  them  out. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE    PURSUIT    OF    HAPPINESS. 

Now  let  US  consider  the  third  right  claimed  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence — the  right  to  "The  Pur- 
suit of  Happiness." 

That  right  of  course  involves  the  rights  to  Life,  to 
Work  and  to  Liberty :  the  best  classifications  will  over- 
lap. 

But  really  what  the  fathers  called  the 
fo^r' maS"r^ightl!™  "S^^^  ^°  the  "pursuit  of  happiness,  is  a  gen- 
eral name  for  innumerable  special  rights. 
Perhaps  we  can  feel  our  way  to  a  scientific  arrange- 
ment of  them,  easier  than  we  can  lay  it  down  at  the 
start,  as  the  rights  to  political  liberty  were  laid  down 
in  the  Constitution.  To  make  a  very  simple  begin- 
ning: have  you  a  right  to  pursue  happiness  into  your 
neighbor's  watermelon  patch?  Certainly  not.  You 
must  pursue  happiness  under  some  restric- 
46.  Restricted,  as  tions,  then,  like  the  restrictions  on  liberty. 
Each  man  must  respect  the  liberties  of 
others:  so  he  must  respect  the  happiness  of  others. 
Every  man  has  a  right  to  pursue  his  own  happiness  so 
far  as  he  does  not  interfere  with  another  man's  pursuit 
of  Jiis  own  happiness.  How,  then,  about  competing 
with  a  man,  and  perhaps  driving  him  out  of  business? 
Competition  exists  among  several  people  doing  the 
same  thing.  To  race  fairly,  each  must  not  interfere 
with  any  other's  doing  the  best  he  can,  and  govern- 
ment should  see  that  he  does  not. 

Obviously,   the   very   first   thing  necessary'  to    do  in 

39 


40  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  46 

the  pursiiit  of  happiness,  is  to  work  for  a  Hving,  but 
that  being,  in  civiUzed  countries,  a  concomitant  of  the 
right  to  Hfe  itself,  we  so  treated  it. 

Th  Ri  ht  to  There  is  another  right  essential  to  make 
Work  invoi'v^es  °  the  Right  to  Work  of  any  value — ^the 
rights  of  Property  Right  to  retain  or  use  up  the  fruits  of 
and  Exchange.  ^^^,^   ^^^^.     ^^^    -^^^^    ^^    ^y^^j^    -^    ^^^^ 

for  nothing  unless  a  man  can  be  protected  in  the  right 
to  the  products  of  his  work ;  and  not  merely  the  right  to 
use  them,  but  also  the  right  to  exchange  them  as 
one  pleases.  If  a  shoemaker  could  exchange  no  shoes 
for  bread,  he  w^ovild  be  in  a  bad  way;  or  if  a  man 
working  for  wages  could  not  exchange  his  money  for 
anything  else,  he  would  be  in  even  a  worse  way. 

The  general  name  given  to  a  man's  right  to  produce, 
to  keep  what  he  produces,  or  to  dispose  of  it  as  he 
pleases,  is  the  Right  of  Private  Property.  Yet  that 
right,  like  all  others,  is  limited  by  the  rights  of  others. 
47  ra;  Limited  '^^^°  ^  man  can  exchange  his  property  as 
lihe  ail  other  '  he  plcascs,  he  has  no  right  to  spend  his 
'^'^  *■  wages  in  getting  drunk,  and  if  other  people 

— his  famih^  for  instance,  have  a  right  to  the  money 
he  spends  in  getting  drunk,  government  should  inter- 
fere to  protect  their  rights.  Even  if  nobody  is  depend- 
ent on  him  for  anything,  a  man  is  seldom  so  solitary 
that  nobody  has  any  rights  in  him;  and  even  if  one  is, 
government  has  a  right  to  see  that  he  conducts  him- 
self so  as  not  to  annoy  others,  or  become  a  charge 
upon  them,  A  man  owns  a  thing,  then,  and  has  a 
right  to  do  as  he  pleases  with  it,  only  if  he  pleases 
not  to  injure  anybody  else,  or  to  do  anything  that 
will  harm  other  people  more  than  it  will  benefit  him  (24). 
48.  The  Rights  to  ^^^^  seldom  exchange  product  alone, 
Wori<,  to  Property    and  Seldom  does  any  one  man  even  start 

and  of  txchange        „ -.1,      -u  ^^      ■    ^  ^  ^ 

involve  Rights  to  With  the  raw  material  and  make  any 
Contract  product  into  complete  exchangeable  shape. 

Generally,  things  are  made  by  a  number  of  men  who 
exchange  their  labor  for  money ;  and  in  making  these 
exchanges — in  making  all  sorts  of  bargains,  other  rights 
arise  to  supplement  the  rights  of  Property  and  Exchange. 


§  5o]  The  Ptirsuit  of  Happiness.  41 

The  first  is  each  man's  right  that  the  man  he  deals  with 
shall  stand  up  to  his  bargain — generally  known  as  rights 
under  Contract. 

49.  and  to  Repu-  Then  as  each  man  needs  others  to  deal 
tation.  with  him,  in  order  to  get  them  to  do  so, 
there  is  another  right  almost  as  essential  as  rights  of 
Property  and  rights  under  Contract — the  right  to 
Reputation.  A  man  has  a  right  not  t6  be  handicapped 
by  any  false  reports  that  will  interfere  with  his  Right 
to  Work  and  to  hold  or  exchange  the  fruits  of  his 
work. 

But  if  he  deserves  a  bad  reputation,  of  course  he 
cannot  expect  anybody  to  employ  him.  Otherwise, 
government  should  guard  a  man's  reputation,  as  part 
of  his  Right  to  Work,  and  as  part  of  his  general  Right 
to  the  Pursuit  of  Happiness.  Government  therefore 
punishes  spreading  malicious  and  injurious  untruths. 
Moreover,  a  man  can  sue  for  damages  to  reputation. 
He  has  as  much  right  to  safety  in  his  reputation  as 
in  his  person  and  property. 

But,  similarly  with  other  rights,  the  right  to  repu- 
tation rests  on  the  duty  of  deserving  a  good  reputation. 
If  a  man  sues  for  damage  to  reputation,  and  the  truth 
of  the  charges  is  proved,  he  cannot  usually  recover  any 
damages.  He  sometimes  may,  however,  if  he  proves 
that  there  was  malice  in  the  charges. 

The  groups  of  rights  we  have  just  considered,  seem 
to  contain  all  that  a  man  needs  in  the  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness, tho  there  are  a  good  many  others  that  it 
would  be  handy  for  him  to  have,  such  as  rights  in  a 
good  bank  balance,  and  two  or  three  good  houses, 
with  stables  full  of  horses,  and  a  yacht,   and   a   few 

50,  State  does  not  other  trifles.  But  the  Signers  of  the 
furnish  means  to      Declaration  evidently  did  not  mean  that 

happiness,  but  only  1  -^i^j.    j.       j.\,  x-u-    ~ 

rights  to  work  for     every  man  has   a  right   to   those  thmgs. 

^^^'^'  They  only  meant  that  every  man  has  a 

right  to  "pursue"  them,  with  a  fair  field  and  no  favor. 
Nor  does  anybody  mean  even  "them"  to  constitute 
"happiness".  They  probably  do  not,  as  often  as  the 
pursuit  of  them;     and  certainly  not  as  often  as    the 


42 


The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§5° 


pursuit  (not  to  speak  of  the  possession)  of  the  treasures 

of  the  mind  and  heart. 

But  we  will  not  attempt    anything  so    difficult  as  a 

discussion  of  "happiness",  but  will  treat  of  its  most 

essential  conditions  so  far  as    government  can  protect 

them,  under  the  heads  indicated.     Now  as  to  rights  in 

property:     people   first    got    property    by 

51.  Evolution  of       appropriating  it   from    Nature — taking  a 
nroperty  rights.         ^^\      r  .  r  11  ■    ^■ 

limb  from  a  tree  for  a  club,  or  picking 
out  a  stone  well  shaped  to  hammer  or  chisel  with.  We 
can  hardly  tell  why  that  gave  the  person  doing  it, 
property  rights  in  the  thing:  we  simply  know  that  it 
is  so;  or  at  best,  we  only  know  from  experience,  that 
its  being  so,  is  absolutely  essential  to  human  welfare. 
A  man's  right  to  what  he  has  produced  or  appropriated 
from  Nature,  is  one  of  those  fundamental  principles  that 
the  experience  of  mankind  has  found  out,  just  as  it  has 
found  out  that  two  and  two  make  four,  or  that  rights 
and  duties  involve  each  other,  or  any  other  bottom  fact 
in  nature.  It  must  have  been  realized  very  early,  and 
has  been  better  realized  every  day,  that  it  is  for  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number  to  admit  such 
rights,  and  to  develop  custom  and  law  to  protect 
them.  The  conception  of  property  rights  is  so  ele- 
mentary that  if  two  monkeys  are  on  a  tree,  and  one 
of  them  picks  a  piece  of  fruit,  and  the  other  tries  to 
take  it  from  him,  we  feel  that  the  property  rights  of 
the  first  are  invaded. 

The  monkey's  picking  the  fruit,  involved  some  labor, 
and  it  also  involved  more  or  less  intelligence:  so  the 
first  conditions  of  property  rights  seem  to  have  been  the 
bounty  of  Nature,  the  desire  for  something,  and  in- 
telligence enough  and  labor  enough  to  carry  out  the 
desire. 

Now  when  we  follow  the  evolution  of  property  up 
into  man  and  into  modern  industry,  we 
Vowces—raw  ma-  find  the  essentials  of  its  production  to  be 
ieriai.  labor,  virtually  the    same  three  things   as   with 

"  "  ^'  the  monkey  or  the  savage ;    but  with  the 

names  a  little  changed:  we  are  now  apt  to  call  them 


§  51  a]  The  Pursuit  of  Happiness.  43 

Raw  Material,  Labor  and  Ability.  The  tnmgs  are 
changed  too.  Most  mechanics  use  raw  material  that 
has  already  been  produced  by  other  mechanics — a 
painter's  raw  material  is  paint  made  by  somebody  else, 
and  a  carpenter's  raw  material  is  wood  from  a  tree 
cut  down  and  sawed  up  by  somebody  else,  and  even  a 
blacksmith  now  seldom  makes  his  own  shoes  or  nails; 
but  the  paint  and  beards  and  hoiseshoes  and  nails  are 
made  of  things  that  Nature  furnishes  directly— from 
real  raw  material. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


REAL     PROPERTY, 


c-  ,     ,     .  Original    raw    material    always    comes 

52.  Land  and  sea       ^  ,i         i        i       -^        r  .  r  ■, 

the  source  of  from    the    land — its    lorests,    larms,    and 

Raw  Material.  mines,  and  from  the  sea.  But  besides 
his  own  labor,  and  land  (which  we  will  understand 
as  including  the  water  and  its  products),  man 
uses  the  powers  of  Nature,  such  as  falling  water, 
wind,  heat,  electricity,  and  the  muscular  strength  of 
animals.  Yet  these  are  mainly  developed  from  the 
land:  to  use  a  waterfall  or  tide  power,  a  man  must 
control  the  waterside;  to  use  even  the  wind,  he  must 
have  a  place  big  enough  to  prevent  others  from  shutting 
off  his  wind;  to  use  heat  and  electricity,  he  must  con- 
trol the  powers  already  named,  or  some  product  of 
coal-mines  and  forests;  and  to  use  the  strength  of 
animals  (including  himself)  he  must  feed  them  with 
products  of  the  earth,  or  with  animals  that  were  fed 
with  products  of  the  earth. 

53.  Early  Con-  Then  the  land  is  plainly  the  first  essen- 
ditions.  tial  of  property  rights  of  any  kind.  Per- 
haps that  has  something  to  do  with  the  name  Real 
Property,  or  Real  Estate,  which  is  usually  applied  to  it 
and  the  things  affixed  to  it,  such  as  fences  and  buildings. 

Among  primitive  peoples,  everybody  does  as  he 
pleases  with  the  land,  but  nobody  pleases  to  do  much: 
so  nobody  exercises  any  property  rights  in  it — no- 
body either  tills  or  builds  upon  it,  or  even  systematic- 
ally gathers  any  natural  produce  from  it;  nor  could 
everybody   do   so,   even   if   they   knew   how,   without 

44 


§54]  Real  Property.  45 

quarreling,  and  the  strongest  man  driving  the  others  off. 

That  is  what  has  really  taken  place  as  our  part  of 
the  ra.ce  has  developed — the  strongest  has  got  posses- 
sion— exclusive  rights  over  portions  of  the  land  have 
become  the  property  of  individuals;  at  first,  by  force 
of  arms,  but  in  recent  times,  by  force  of  ability,  which 
we  shall  see  more  of  later.  But  it  does  not  follow 
that  all  people  having  land  have  forcibly  taken  it  from 
others  who  were  weak  in  arms  or  ability.  The  early 
king  is  often  at  the  head  of  a  people  glad  to  reward 
his  leadership  against  their  enemies,  by  making  him  lord 
of  land  which  he  parcels  among  his  followers;  and  the 
modern  man  of  ability,  while  he  may  control  a  great 
deal  of  land  himself,  generally  enables  those  whom  he 
guides  to  control  more  than  they  could  without  him. 
The  savage  has  no  idea  of  property  rights  in  land.  He 
simply  wanders  where  he  can  find  game  and  fish.  For 
that  matter,  savages  have  not  much  idea  of  property 
rights  anyhow;  and  this  is  true  whether  the  savages 
are  primitive  men  or  the  backward  members  of  modern 
society.  Barbarians,  even  when  evolved  up  to  the 
grade  of  the  Spartans,  have  generally  thought  it  admir- 
able to  be  a  skilful  thief;  and  even  many  ill-balanced 
members  of  civilized  society  wish  to  take  part  of  the 
property  accumulated  by  the  wise  and  energetic,  and 
give  it  to  the  stupid  and  lazy. 

The  first  germ  of  property  rights  in  land,  is  the  con- 
viction that  the  tribe  has  a  right  to  the  territory  it 
roams  over,  so  that  no  other  tribe  has  a  right  to  enter 
it.  When  the  savage  gets  civilized  enough  to  culti- 
54,  Communistic  vate  the  soil,  his  idea  of  property  rights 
ownership.  in  it,  is  Still  Very  rudimentary — barbarians 

simply  use  their  land  in  common.  As  civilization  ad- 
vances, they  portion  it  out  among  themselves  for  a 
short  period,  and  then  reapportion  it.  Even  to-day 
backward  people,  like  the  Russian  serfs  and  the  In- 
dian ryots,  hold  their  land  on  short  leases  from  the 
community.  But  the  community  still  owns  all  the 
land,  just  as  it  does  among  barbarians,  and  reappor- 
tions it  from  time  to  time. 


46  TJie  Protection  of  Rights.  [§55 

As  people  progress  farther  than  the  Russians  and 
East  Indians,  the  feudal  system  is  generally  the  next 
55.  The  Feudal  Step,  and  it  is  a  step  toward  distinct  prop- 
System,  erty  rights  in  land.  It  is  generally  a 
result  of  conquest.  The  system  was  (and  is  still,  for 
that  matter,  in  some  backward  places)  that  the  con- 
quering sovereign  getting  possession  of  all  the  land,  lets 
his  dukes  and  great  nobles  have  portions  on  condition 
that  when  called  upon;  they  shall  furnish  and  lead  large 
bodies  of  soldiers;  the  great  nobles  parcel  the  land 
out  again  to  petty  lords  and  squires,  on  the  condition 
that  each  shall  help  make  up  the  overlord's  quota  of 
the  king's  army,  by  furnishing  and  leading  a  few 
soldiers;  and  these  petty  chiefs  parcel  out  their  pieces 
of  land  again  to  the  actual  cultivators,  on  condition 
that  they  shall  serve  as  private  soldiers. 

While  nobody  but  the  ruler  owned  anything  under 
this  system,  it  was  an  advance  on  such  systems  as  still 
-- ,  ,   ,,,.  linger  in  Russia  and  India,  because  instead 

55  (^)'   Wnu  an  ^  ,  , 

advance  on  com-  of  a  man  being  shifted  from  one  piece  of 
munism.  \Q,n6.  to  another,  as  he  is  under  the  system 

when  the  community  periodically  takes  it  back  and 
redivides  it,  he  stayed  on  it,  and  his  descendants  after 
him,  and  got  interested  in  it,  and  could  afford  to  fertilize 
and  make  other  improvements  far  ahead. 

The  feudal  system,  then,  was  a  great  advance  over 
the  ownership  by  the  community  which  goes  with 
primitive  civilization,  because  a  man  takes  care  of 
what  he  has  some  sort  of  permanent  claim  on,  and 
neglects  what  he  has  not.  Farms  on  short  leases  are 
always  in  a  tumble-down  condition. 
55  r6;.  When  .  I^  our  own  history,  the  communal  sys- 

estabiished.  tem  changed  into  the  feudal  system  among 

our  forefathers  in  England,  with  the  Saxon  settlement, 
and  the  division  of  the  conquered  lands  among  each 
chief's  followers.  In  some  of  the  Saxon  kingdoms  the 
system  was  evolved  faster  than  in  others.  It  can 
hardly  be  said  to  have  become  universal,  however, 
before  Cnut  the  Dane  was  able  to  impose  a  uniform 
rule  over  all  England. 


§55<^  Real  Property.  47 

^^(0).  Evolution  .y?^^  ^^/"^T^""!^.  England,  he  di- 
0/  hereditary  vidcd  wliat  land  he  did  not  keep  himself 
feudal  relations,  ^mong  his  great  jarls  (earls),  but  only  for 
their  lifetimes.  That  was  the  first  transition  step  toward 
the  present  system  of  an  ownership  forever,  subject  to 
only  such  taxes  as  the  government  may  impose.  At 
the  earl's  death,  the  king  was  again  nominal  owner;  but 
as  the  earl  had  subdivided  among  a  great  number  of 
followers,  of  course  it  was  to  the  interest  of  these  fol- 
lowers, as  well  as  of  the  earl's  family,  that  things  should 
be  left  undisturbed;  and  it  was  also  to  the  king's 
interest  (unless  he  wanted  to  put  a  new  favorite  in  the 
place),  provided  the  successor  would  render  him  the 
same  support  in  men  or  produce  that  his  predecessor 
had  rendered.  Thus,  as  it  was  to  the  interest  of  all 
in  possession,  that  no  new  favorite  should  come  in  and 
upset  things,  in  time  they  generally  succeeded,  by 
arguments  or  payments  or  threats,  in  inducing  the 
king  to  invest  the  dead  man's  son  with  his  father's 
rights. 
,,,.,  „      ..  Yet  the  old  principle  that  the  land  was 

55  (a).  Guardian-  F        _    ^        .,        ,. 

ship,  disposal  by  the  king  s  and  returned  to  him  as  soon 
marriage.  ^^  ^^iq  holder  died,  gave  the  king  opportu- 

nities to  exact  heavy  payments  before  letting  widow 
and  children  succeed  to  the  holdings  of  the  husband 
and  father.  This  was  the  original  of  our  present  suc- 
cession tax.  It  also  led  to  the  king  having  rights  of 
guardianship  over  all  minors,  and  of  disposal  of  widows 
and  fatherless  maidens  in  marriage;  and  he  generally 
got  pretty  big  prices  for  the  rich  ones,  and  pretty 
large  commissions  out  of  all  estates.  Now  the  only 
relic  of  any  such  rights  is,  in  England,  the  Chancery 
Court;  and  in  America,  the  Surrogate's  Court,  or  Pro- 
bate Court  or  Orphans'  Court — the  name  varying  in 
the  different  states.  All  of  these  courts  try  to  see 
that  nobody  imposes  on  widows  and  minors,  and  they 
all  charge  very  moderate  fees — probably  less  than 
the  cost  of  keeping  up  the  court,  and  in  some  states 
none  at  all. 

To  perfect  the  system  started  by  Cnut,  William  the 


48  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§55^ 

55  (e).  Domesday  Conqueror  had  an  itinerant  commission 
^'"'*-  called  barones  regis  make  careful  reports 
of  ail  the  lands  in  England,  with  the  occupants.  These 
reports  made  the  celebrated  Domesday  Book.  He  con- 
fiscated land  right  and  left,  and  put  all  he  could  under 
feudal  tenure,  but  it  took  till  the  reign  of  his  son  Henry 
to  finish  up  the  system. 

56.  Evolution  of  The  first  definite  step  toward  an  owner- 

private  ownership,    ship  more  private  still,  was  taken  in  the 
twelfth  century,  Vv^hen  Henry  II.'  (Becket's  friend)  needed 
soldiers  for  war  in  France.    His  tenants,  like  our  own 
militia,  were    not    obliged  to  fight   away 

56  (a).  Scutage.        r  ,'  ,  ,°  -t,-  i 

from  home:  so  to  get  money  to  hire  sol- 
diers to  fight  abroad,  he  took  from  his  knights  "scu- 
tage" (shield-money)  for  rent,  in  place  of  military  ser- 
vice. 

56  (b).  Leases  for  But  as  militarism  declined  with  barba- 
labor.  rism,  and  soldiers  were  needed  less  often, 

those  who  controlled  land  began  to  let  it  out  for 
other  rewards  than  military  service — sometimes  even 
for  farm  service  on  the  land  retained  by  the  landlord 
himself,  to  be  rendered  between  times,  when  the  tenant 
was  not  cultivating  his  leased  land ;  and  sometimes  for 
part  of  the  produce;  and  sometimes  for  money  pay- 
ment. A  very  ill  wind  blew  most  of  this  good  with  it : 
for  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  left  the  nobles  in  great  need 
of  money,  and  but  little  need  of  military  service. 
56 re;  Mone  ^^^   tcnant-servicc,   and    even.money- 

com mutation  of      rent.  Still  left  nobody  permanent  owner  of 

tabor  leases.  ^^^  ^^^^  ^^^   ^-^^  j^-^^.     ^^^   ^^^   ^^^^   ^^_ 

vance  naturally  came  about  by  one  big  payment  for 
life  or  for  all  time,  in  place  of  the  annual  payment; 
or  by  increased  annual  payments  for  an  agreed  series 
of  5''ears,  on  condition  that  all  payment  should  stop 
at  the  end  of  the  time. 

Now  it  may  be  asked  what  is  the  use 
AmeS"**""^^ '"    °^  °^^  going  over  all  this  history  ?     Could 
not  our  ancestors  have  started  on  a  pri- 
vate-property basis  in  America  without  it  ?     But  where 
could  they  have  got  the  idea?     It  had  to  be  evolved. 


§  59]  R^clI  Property.  49 

The  full-grown  ideas  that  we  take  as  matters  of  course 
to-day,  have  been  the  slow  work — often  the  bloody- 
work,  of  centuries-. 

Land-tenure  started  in  America  by  the  kings  of  Eng- 
land, France  and  Spain,  giving  much  of  the  land  to 
individuals  and  companies,  and  these  divided  it  up 
among  the  people  of  the  settled  portions.  In  time, 
most  of  the  land  not  so  divided  up  came,  in  one  way 
and  another,  into  the  possession  of  the  United  States 
government. 

The  government  has  kept  some  still,  has  thrown  some 
open  to  rights  of  ownership  by  settlers  on  various  con- 
ditions, sold  some  to  individuals,  reserved  some  for 
National  Parks,  given  some  to  the  Pacific  Railroads 
and  a  few  other  roads,  so  that  they  could  sell  it  for 
money  to  build  the  roads ;  and  also  given  some  to  the 
states  in  aid  of  agriculture,  the  states  having  in  turn 
given  it  to  educational  institutions  which  sell  it  to 
get  money  to  pay  expenses. 

All  the  systems  of  use  of  land  which 
simiiaramoTg'ail  have  been  described,  exist  somewhere  in 
peooiesofthesame  the  world  now  —  there  is  plenty  of  land 
now  in  the  condition  that  all  land  was  in 
once — desert,  or  with  savages  roaming  over  it — land 
which  virtually  no  one  owns.  Then  there  is  land  in 
every  one  of  the  conditions  of  tenure  which  we  have 
been  describing: — among  many  partly  civilized  peoples, 
there  is  common  land  and  feudal  land ;  among  civilized 
rural  communities  there  is  much  land  let  out  for  a 
share  of  the  product;  and  in  both  rural  communities 
and  cities  where  civilization  is  at  its  height,  there  is 
land  whose  rents  are  always  paid  in  money;  and  last 
of  all,  there  is  much  land,  in  both  city  and  country, 
owned  by  those  who  occupy  it. 

Private  property  in  land,  whenever  and 
erty  inlanVa"'''  where ver  it  has  become  established,  has 
great  stimulus  to     been  probably  the  greatest  single  step  in 

' '  ^'  civilization.      With  it,  appeared  the  first 

chance  for  everybody  with  talent  and  energy  to  get 
possession  of  land,  and  of  the  social  consideration  which 


50  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  59 

that  possession  brings.  Outside  of  war,  politics,  and 
the  church,  this  was  the  first  offering  to  energy  and 
invention,  of  the  great  prizes  that  have  made  the  differ- 
ence between  the  forest-community  with  no  letters  or 
arts,  and  the  community  with  steam,  electricity,  books, 
schools,  libraries,  galleries,  orchestras,  and  world-wide 
travel — in  a  word,  modern  civilization  has  grown  up 
with  private  property  in  land. 

This  is  saying  distinctly  that  civilization  has  been 
the  work  of  a  few  prize-winners,  or  at  least  prize-seekers 
— the  men  whom  the  chance  of-  private  property  stimu- 
lated— that  it  has  been  the  work  of  individual  men, 
and  not  of  the  race — of  a  few  able  men  guiding  the 
rest. 

Often  in  barbarous  times,  the  strong 
man'I^cliance^ot  man's  chance  is  at  the  expense  of  the  weak, 
at  the  expense  of  but  seldom  in  civilized  times :  a  civilized 
government  tries  to  give  all  men  a  chance 
to  get  all  they  can  and  keep  all  they  get.  That  gives 
the  able  man  his  chance,  no  matter  how  poor  his  start. 
Rapid  new  development  of  corporations  (140)  in  the 
United  States  has  just  now  outgrown  the  government's 
capacity  to  control  some  of  their  overreachings.  But 
the  cases  are  sporadic,  and  it  may  be  hoped  that  govern- 
ment will  soon  rise  to  the  situation.  Ordinarily,  under 
a  good  government,  the  strong  man  does  not  generally 
get  his  sustenance  from  the  weak  one.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  gets  it  from  Nature,  through  energy  and  in- 
vention. Widening  and  securing  the  range  of  private 
property,  leads  the  strong  man  to  work  harder  and 
invent  more,  by  making  his  prizes  greater,  and  increas- 
ing his  hold  on  them.  And  it  does  even  more  for  the 
weak  man:  it  not  only  stimulates  him  to  do  his  little 
best,  but  gives  his  property  a  protection  that  the  strong 
man  does  not  need,  because  he  can  take  care  of  his 
own.  Another  advantage  to  the  weak  man  under  a 
constitution  that  recognizes  and  secures  private  prop- 
erty, is  that  the  strong  man  will  be  stimulated  to  reclaim 
and  cultivate  so  much  more  land,  and  to  make  so  many 
more  things,  that  he  will  find  much  more  profitable  work 


§6i]  Real  Property.  51 

for  the  weak  man  to  do,  and  provide  much  more  for 
the  weak  man's  good.  That  is  proved  by  the  wonder- 
ful increase  in  rich  men's  gifts  for  the  general  benefit. 
^.  „      ^.     .   .         It  would  be  expected,  then,  as  is  found 

61.  Proportion  of  pn-    ,       ■,        ^  .-u     -  •     ■^■       ^-  a 

vate owners  ircreases  to  be  true,  that  as  Civilization  advances, 
with  civiiizat  on.  ^j^^  proportion  of  absolute  private  owners 
of  land  increases:  in  fact  there  is  no  more  marked  evi- 
dence of  the  progress  of  civilization  than  that  relative 
increase;  and  there  is  no  better  field  for  philanthropy 
or  strengthening  the  state,  than  increasing  the  number 
of  people  who  own  at  least  their  homes.  Napoleon 

made  it  the  law  in  France  that  the  land  of  a  person 
dying  should  be  divided  among  all  his  children.  This 
has  produced  an  immense  number  of  private  owners, 
and  they  are  among  the  richest  and  best  citizens  of 
their  class  in  the  world.*     Yet  this  dividing  could  be 

*  For  over  forty  years  there  has  lingered  in  my  memory  a 
quotation  from  Michelet,  in  Mill's  Political  Economy,  regarding 
the  effect  of  private  property  in  land,  and,  as  poetry  is  stronger 
than  philosophy,  it  has  probably  done  more  to  make  me  realize 
the  merits  of  the  question  than  all  the  discussions  I  have  read 
since.      It  seems  worth  translating  here. 

"If  we  want  to  get  at  the  inmost  thought,  the  passion,  of 
the  French  peasant,  it  is  very  easy  to  do.  Let  us  take  a  walk 
some  Sunday  in  the  country,  and  follow  him  up.  See  him  walk- 
ing down  there  before  you.  It  is  two  o'clock;  his  wife  is  at 
vespers;  he  is  gotten  up  in  his  Sunday  best;  and,  I  am  ready 
to  vouch,  is  going  to  see  his  mistress. 

"What  mistress?     His  land. 

"I  don't  say  that  he  will  go  directly.  No,  he  is  free  to-day, 
he  can  go  or  not  as  he  pleases.  Doesn't  he  go  there  often 
enough  every  day  of  the  week?  Moreover,  he  turns  away,  he 
goes  somewhere  else,  he  has  business  somewhere  else.  But  he 
will  go  there  all  the  same. 

"It  is  true  that  he  goes  very  near:  but  that  just  happened 
so.  He  looks  at  it,  but  apparently  he  will  not  go  in;  what 
has  he  to  do  there?     But  he  will  go  in,  all  the  same. 

"  Nevertheless,  it  is  probable  that  he  will  not  do  any  work; 
he  is  gotten  up  for  Sunday;  he  has  on  a  white  blouse  and  a 
white  shirt — yet  all  that  does  not  stop  him  from  pulling  out 
an  occasional  weed,  or  throwing  out  that  stone.  Then  there  is 
that  stump  which  annoys  him,  but  he  has  not  his  pick  with 
him:    so  the  stump  can  wait  till  to-morrow. 

"  Then  he  crosses  his  arms  and  stands  still,  looks  around 
earnestly,  carefully.     He  looks  long,  very  long,  and  seems  to 


52  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  6i 

carried  to  a  point  where  the  heir's  farm  would  not  be 
big  enough  to  support  him  or  pay  for  using  expensive 
machinery;  but  then  he  can  sell  out  and  go  to  manu- 
facturing or  shop  keeping.  The  difficulty  would  cure 
itself. 

Our  own  country  shares  with  France  the  leadership 
of  the  world  in  wide  "dissemination  of  the  ownership 
of  land,  and  the  fact  is  of  very  great  importance  to  us: 

,     ,  the  large  numbers  of   people  owning  their 

the  best  guardians  own  farms  and  theirown  homes  m  America, 
of  government,  probably  do  more  in  the  desperate  fight  to 
keep  the  government  prudent  and  patriotic,  than  all 
other  influences  put  together.  Any  man  owning  land 
must  pay  taxes — he  cannot  hide  his  land  from  the  tax- 
gatherer:  therefore  he  must  have  a  stake  in  honest  and 
economical  government.  We  shall  see  much  more  of 
this  very  important  consideration. 

The  French  peasants  make  better  in- 
fh^r'iffy  citiz^ens!^^  comes  than  other  small  farmers,  who 
lease  their  land,  just  as  our  farmers  who 
own  their  land,  generally  make  better  incomes  than 
those  who  lease  it :  a  man  cares  for  that  which  belongs 
to  him  in  a  way  that  he  cares  for  nothing  else,  and 
enjoys  caring  for  it  to  a  degree  that  keeps  him  cheerful 
and  capable;  the  more  cheerful  and  energetic  he  is, 
the  more  he  produces;  and  the  more  that  a  man  pro- 
duces, the  better  not  only  for  him,  but  for  the  whole 
community,  because  the  cheaper  it  can  be  sold  to  those 
who  do  not  produce  it. 

64,  Exaggerated  Some    people    have    pushed    reasoning 

fo^goiiig'ad*-^^  from  these  advantages,  to  at  least  two 
vantages.  very  absurd  extremes. 

forget  himself.  At  last,  if  he  thinks  anybody  is  looking,  if  he 
sees  anybody  coming,  he  moves  off  with  reluctant  steps.  Yet 
at  thirty  paces,  he  stops,  turns  again,  and  casts  over  his  land 
a  last  look,  a  look  deep  and  somber,  but  to  one  who  knows 
how  to  see,  the  man  is  thrilled,  his  look  is  from  the  heart, 
charged  with  devotion."  —  Le  Peuple,  par  J.  Michelet,  F" 
partie,  ch.  I. 


§  64  a]  Real  Property.  53 

As  the  first,  they  say  that  as  every  person  born  has 
a  right  to  exist  on  the  earth,  and  therefore  a  right  to 
a  place  of  existence — to  a  home:  every  person  is  en- 
titled to  own  a  piece  of  land. 

It  is  hard  to  see  how  that  right  can  be  good  against 
anybody  but  his  parents.  Nobody  else  ordered  him 
here,  and  certainly  a  man  with  a  little  or  no  land,  can- 
not have  a  right  to  bring  into  the  world  as  many  children 
as  lie  pleases,  and  require  other  people  to  give  them 
a  part  of  their  land.  The  only  condi- 
^oah'oiJey^''*  tion  upon  which  a  man  can  claim  a  right 
to  land  or  to  anything  else,  is,  of  course, 
by  performing  the  duties  which  correspond  to  the 
right  (23,  25),  either  by  appropriating  what  nobody 
else  had  a  right  to  (51),  or  exchanging  for  what  he 
wants,  something  he  had  appropriated  or  produced. 

Ajid  even  suppose  it  possible  to  give  every  man  a  piece 
of  land,  how  long  would  most  of  them  keep  it?  Appar- 
ently until  they  could  sell  it  or  give  it  away — one 
cannot  always  do  either.  It  is  now  very  hard  to 
keep  people  on  the  land,  they  are  flocking  more  and 
more  to  the  cities,  even  if  they  have  to  live  in  tene- 
ment-houses. In  1905  one  third  of  the  half  million 
Italian  immigrants  were  in  the  slums  of  New  York, 
while  the  agricultural  industries  of  the  South,  in  a 
climate  and  labor  congenial  to  the  immigrants,  were 
crying  for  them  in  vain. 

Yet  the  Salvation  Army's  farm  colonies,  for  instance, 
are  excellent  as  far  as  they  go.  But  so  far,  they  have 
got  only  a  trifling  portion  of  the  three  million  people 
they  say  they  ought  to  have.  With  more  money  they 
would  get  more,  but  not  enough  to  reverse  the  rule. 

Yet  in  spite  of  all  the  facts,  there  is  a  great  outcry 
against  holders  of  idle  land,  for  keeping  the  starving 
millions  away  from  it;  but  there  is  always  a  great 
outcry  against  holders  of  anything  by  those  who  do 
not  .hold  anything,  and  all  the  time  this  idle  land  is 
paying  taxes  which  would  not  be  paid  if  government 
owned  it. 

The  second  reason  given  for  the  claim  that  every 


54  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  64  b 

man  has  the  right  to  own  a  piece  of  land,  is  that  every 
man  has  a  right  to  a  living,  and  that  as 
t^a^ilvJigy^''*  everything  that  sustains  life  conies,  in  the 
first  instance,  from  the  land,  every  man 
has  a  right  to  enough  of  the  land  to  make  his  living  out 
of.  There  are  two  answers;  no  healthy  man  has  a 
right  to  a  living  unless  he  earns  it,  or  gets  it  honestly 
from  somebody  who  did  earn  it;  and  there  are  endless 
ways  of  earning  it  without  owning  land .  as  already 
stated,  many  people  cannot  be  forced  to  make  their 
living  out  of  the  land.  Moreover,  not  every  prosperous 
man  gets  his  living  directly  out  of  the  land,  even  many 
very  rich  people  do  not  own  any  land;  and  in  fact,  not 
one  American  in  ten  owns  any  land  whatever.  So  it 
does  not  seem  necessary  that,  to  have  a  home  and 
make  a  living,  a  man  must  own  land. 

As  a  fact,  any  energetic  poor  man,  under  ordinary 
circumstances,  can  get  a  farm  to  work  if  he  wants  it. 
The  older  parts  of  the  country,  New  England  and  the 
South,  abound  in  empty  farms  begging  for  tenants  to 
work  them, on  shares;  and  the  new  Western  wild  land 
needs  them  as  much;  there  is  plenty  of  open  land  and 
sunlight  and  fresh  air  within  easy  reach  of  the  people 
who  are  packed  in  the  city  tenement-houses,  but  they 
will  not  go  to  it. 

But  to  work  land,  men  require  capital — money, 
horses  and  farm  machinery,  and  it  may  be  urged  that 
it  is  because  of  lack  of  them  that  they  will  not  go  to 
the  land.  But  the  fact  is  that  the  men  who  have  farms 
and  capital  to  work  them,  are  suffering  because  they 
cannot  hire  labor;  and  all  the  while  people  are  working 
in  other  pursuits,  at  worse  wages,  and  penned  up  in 
city  tenements.  In  answer  to  this,  it  is  urged   that 

as  the  laborer  going  to  work  on  another  man's  land, 
would  not  make  him  its  owner,  the  laborer's  not  going 
for  hire  does  not  prove  that  he  would  not  go  if  the 
land  were  his  own.  But  those  who  own  land,  are 
leaving  it  more  and  more.  If  anybody  else  wants  any, 
he  can  prove  his  right  to  it,  as  he  can  to  anything  else, 
by  earning  it. 


§  66]  Real  Property.  55 

CK  ,     .    ,   I  So  far  as  observed,  those  who  obiect  to 

65.  Land  valueless  .  ,  .  '  ,     ,  •* 

to  all  but  able        private  ownership  or  land,  have  not  gen- 

'"®"'  erally  shown  any  particular  inclination  to 

work  the  land  or  improve  it,  or  any  ability  to  do  it  if 
they  try.  The  objection  is  most  generally  made  by 
men  who  have  not  had  much  success  in  any  other  pur- 
suit, and  that  is  a  poor  show  for  success  in  farming:  it 
certainly  requires  as  much  ability  as  any  other  ordinary 
pursuit.  People  are  constantly  taking  up  land  who 
cannot  support  themselves  on  it,  and  who  end  by  work- 
ing for  the  people  with  the  ability  to  show  them  how. 
On  the  whole,  then,  it  does  not  seem  to  make  much 
difference  whether  everyone  is  entitled  to  a  portion  of 
the  earth  or  not,  as  long  as  those  who  are  able  to  do 
anything  witli  it,  are  generally  able  to  get  it ;  and  those 
who  are  not  able  to  get  it,  would  not  generally  be  able 
to  do  anything  with  it  if  they  had  it. 

gg  p         ,  So  much  for  the  exaggerations  of  the 

reversion  to  gov-      advantages    of    private    ownership.     Now 

ernment  ownership.  ^^  ^  ^^^^^  ^j^^g^  g^-j^^  ^^  ^j^^^g  exaggera- 
tions are  generally  about  as  consistent  as  people  given 
to  exaggeration  usually  are.  Those  who  in  one  breath 
thus  magnify  the  benefits  of  private  ownership  of  land, 
in  the  next  breath  generally  propose  to  do  away  with 
private  ownership  altogether — they  generally  propose 
that  government  shall  take  all  the  land,  and  that 
everybody  who  uses  any,  shall  pay  rent  to  govern- 
ment, instead  of,  as  now,  owning  the  land  without 
rent,  or  paying  rent  to  a  private  party.  And  all  that, 
in  face  of  the  plain  fact  that  if  government  did  take 
all  the  land  and  pay  for  it  and  rent  it  to  the  people, 
it  could  make  no  difference  to  people  now  paying  rent, 
unless  they  should  pay  less  rent,  and  then  it  would 
be  simply  a  scheme  for  government  making  a  present 
of  the  difference,  to  anybody  who  wanted  land,  at  the 
expense  of  those  who  did  not. 

This  speculation  was  once  proposed  by  John  Stuart 
Mill  to  the  English  government.  If  they  had  gone 
into  it,  instead  of  people  in  general  being  gainers,  as 


5 6  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§66 

expected,  the  landlords  would  have  been  the  gainers 
at  the  expense  of  the  rest  of  the  community:  at  a  fair 
price,  the  lands  of  England  would  have  cost  the  govern- 
ment more  then  than  they  were  worth  fifty  years  later: 
so  far  have  our  wheat  and  cattle,  and  those  of  Australia, 
taken  the  place  of  England's  productions. 

But  government's  taking  all  the  land  by  robbery,  as 
is  quite  widely  proposed  by  those  who  have  none  to 
lose,  and  renting  it  to  the  people,  would  help  the  tax- 
payers more  than  it  would  the  poor:  for  the  state 
would  receive  all  that  rent-money,  and  need  less  for 
taxes.  But  the  landlords  pay  most  of  the  taxes  now: 
in  New  York  and  Massachusetts,  for  in- 
fupporCthTgovern-  Stance,   four  fifths   of  those   collected   di- 

ment  under  either  rectlv.  And  most  of  the  Other  fifth — the 
system.  ^  '  ,  ^ 

taxes     on     personal     property,     are     un- 
doubtedly also  paid  by  the  persons  owning  the  land. 

Then  after  all,  the  scheme  would  be  as  broad  as 
long:  for  government  ownership  would  not  put  the 
land  in  new  hands.  If  anybody  wants  land  and  has 
the  money  to  pay  for  it,  he  gets  it  now.  What  differ- 
ence would  it  make  if  he  got  it  from  government? 

Last  of  all,  the  state  is  not  apt  to  make  a  good  land- 
lord: for  it  already  has  more  to  do  than  it  does  well 
or  honestly. 

68.  Some  advocate       So  far  as  we  have  gone,  then,  there  does 

robberv;  which  ^       ,  °    ,     '  ' 

would  disappoint     not  seem  to  be  any  rhyme  or  reason  m 

the  scheme  of  government  ownership:    so 

there   is   probably   some    "true   inwardness"    that   we 

have   not   yet   attained   to.     That   inwardness   is   that 

all  these  foolish  notions  that  we  have  been  considering, 

are  given  as  reasons  why  government  should  take  all 

the  land  without  paying  for  it — take  it  either  directly 

or  by  taxing   all  the  value  out  of   it,  and  rent  it  to 

those  wanting  it,  and  devote  the  proceeds,  above  the 

present  amount  of  taxation,  to  public  works  and  the 

benefit  of  the  poor.     That  certainly  would  at  least  be 

helping  the  poor    at  the  expense  of  the  rich;    but  not 

as  exclusively  as  its  advocates  intend:    for  many  of 


§  7o]  Real  Property.  57 

the  rich  have  Httle  or  no  land — many  owners  of  large 
tracts  are  land-poor  with  their  holdings  mortgaged  for 
more  than  they  are  worth,  and  many  of  the  poor,  if 
they  were  to  receive  land  as  a  gift,  would  not  keep  it. 
Yet  certainly  the  scheme  would  help  some  of  the 
poor  at  the  expense  of  some  of  the  rich,  but  it  would 
help  more  of  the  rich  at  the  expense  of  all  of  the  poor: 
for  any  attempt  to  carry  out  the  scheme  would  make, 
for  a  time,  the  greatest  financial  upset  ever  seen,  and 
there  never  yet  was  a  financial  upset  in  which  the 
rich  did  not  generally  hold  on  to  what  they  had,  and 
buy  cheaply  what  the  poor  had  to  part  with  at  forced  sale. 
Government  ownership  of  land,  then,  is 
fo^help  th°e"poorts'  One  of  half  a  dozen  schemes  to  help  the 
to  help  them  help  poor  without  their  helping  themselves, 
which  are  all  equally  unsound,  and  which 
we  will  see  more  of  as  we  go  on.  This  world  was 
plainly  made  for  the  people  who  help  themselves,  and 
there  has  been  no  way  discovered  for  anybody  else  to 
get  much  good  out  of  it.  Yet  helping  oneself  is  not 
the  only  way  to  get  good:  more  still  can  be  had  from 
helping  one's  neighbor,  but  a  man  cannot  do  that  be- 
fore he  takes  reasonable  care  of  himself. 

We  will  more  fully  consider  the  questions  of  the 
care  of  the  poor,  when  we  come  to  treat  of  govern- 
ment's promotion  of  convenience.  For  the  present 
we  are  busy  with  its  protection  of  rights.  Now  out- 
side of  alleged  "public  policy",  which  embraces  the 
points  we  have  considered  already,  there  is  twofold 
moral  justification  alleged  for  protecting  the  rights  of 
the  community  by  robbing  present  holders  of  their 
land — first,  that  the  land  originally  belonged  to  every- 
body, and  was  wrongfully  seized  by  those  from  whom 
its  present  owners  got  it,  and  therefore  should  go  back 
to  everybody;  second,  the  famous  "unearned  incre- 
ment ' '  argument . 
,„  ,.         ,  As   to    the    spoliation   argument,  there 

70.  The  moral  argu-  .  .  -  r        -,  ^    •  1 

merits— original       IS  no  evidence  for  it,  except  m  such  cases 
general  ownership.    ^^  ^^^^  Europeans  dealt  with  Americans 


58  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  70 

and  Africans.  If  most  of  the  land  in  Europe  and 
Asia  was  stolen  by  the  original  grantors  of  its  present 
owners,  it  was  "stolen  from  a  thief":  for  it  had  been 
conquered  and  reconquered  over  and  over  again.  The 
rights  of  the  present  owners  are  vastly  clearer  than 
any  other  rights  that  could  be  presented:  no  descend- 
ants of  previous  proprietors  who  might  want  to  stand 
in  the  shoes  of  the  present  ones,  could  prove  any  rights 
at  all:  if  they  could,  courts  are  generally  open  to  them. 

But  where  civilized  people  have  robbed  barbarians — 
the  case  of  our  ancestors  in  America,  if  you  please — 
that  case  might  be  a  reason  why  the  present  owners 
(including  the  heirs  of  Henry  George,  if  he  owned  any 
land)  should  give  the  land  back  to  any  heirs  of  the 
savages  they  can  find;  but  it  cannot  possibly  be  a  rea- 
son why  the  owners  who  are  not  heirs  or  followers  of 
Henry  George,  should  give  it  to  those  who  are.  The 
barbarians  had  not  much  idea  of  any  such  rights  them- 
selves: those  rights  take  shape  only  as  a  civilized  com- 
munity grows  up  on  the  land.  But  some  people  we 
call  barbarous  do  use  their  land,  and  some  land  has 
been  taken  from  barbarians  of  that  kind.  Yet  there 
are  very  few  such  cases,  and  in  most  of  them  it  is  too 
late  to  find  anybody  representing  the  barbarian  owner; 
and  even  if  it  were  not,  it  is  too  late  to  do  justice  to 
the  former  interests  without  doing  more  injustice  to 
interests  now  vested.  Many  a  piece  of  land  which  was 
never  worth  a  dollar  to  the  barbarian,  is  worth  millions 
to  present  innocent  holders. 

As  a  matter  of  abstract  justice,  you  might  give  the 
barbarian  the  dollar  if  you  could  find  him,  but  that  is 
not  what  Henry  George's  followers  are  after.  Yet  of 
course  in  theory,  where  civilized  people  have  got  posses- 
sion by  force,  and  not,  as  Penn  did,  by  bargain,  justice 
should  be  done  if  it  were  possible.  Some  deny  that 
Penn's  buying  a  great  state  for  a  few  beads  was  a  fair 
bargain.  But  that  was  more  than  it  was  worth  to  the 
savages.  The  fact  that  civilized  men  have  made  it 
worth  more,  is  not  one  that  the  savages  are  entitled 
to  any  benefit  from. 


§  72]  Real  Property.  59 

In  a  similar  case,  those  who  sold  the  site  of  the  city  of 
Chicago  little  more  than  a  lifetime  ago,  for  a  mere  song, 
are  not  entitled  to  any  benefit  from  what  later  owners 
have  done  with  it :  for  what  the  latter  men  have  made, 
is  their  own. 

Even  if  the  site  had  been  obtained  by 
remedy Tnjus^tice  fraud,  it  Ought  not  to  be  given  back  to 
fnc"?eSs1t?"'^  the  original  owner  if  he  can  be  found :  for 
such  a  doctrine  would  stop  all  enterprise — 
nobody  could  build  or  cultivate  with  guarantee  that 
some  far-back  landowner  or  his  heirs  would  not  come 
along  and  claim  the  land  and,  of  course,  all  on  it. 

Yet  nobody  can  get  a  good  title  to  land  or  anything 
else  through  fraud,  nor  can  anybody  convey  any  better 
title  than  he  has  himself;  and  a  title  obtained  through 
fraud  fifty  or  a  hundred  years  ago,  and  passed  from 
hand  to  hand  since,  cannot  be  anything  but  a  fraudulent 
title. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  receiving  an 
duties V°ownefship  old  title,  good  or  bad,  is  not  the  only  way 
breeds  rights  of       to  get  a  good  title.     Using  the  land,  or 

ownership.  .°  ,°,.         ...        °  ' 

domg  Other  duties  incident  to  ownership, 

will  answer  the  purpose.  The  law  provides  that  any- 
body who  performs  duties  of  ownership  for  a  reasonable 
time  (varying  in  different  states — usually  twenty  years) 
during  which  nobody  else  has  performed  any,  has  a 
perpetual  right  to  the  land;  and  has  that  right,  even  if 
the  land  clearly  belonged  to  somebody  else  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twenty  years. 

Such  a  law  is  justified  by  at  least  three  good  reasons : 
first,  no  one  has  a  right  to  neglect  his  property  so  far  as 
neither  to  use  it  himself,  nor  assert  ownership  while 
another  is  using  it;  second,  if  an  owner  will  not  use 
land,  it  is  an  advantage  to  the  community  to  have 
somebody  else  use  it;  third,  if  a  man  honestly  comes 
into  a  title  that  was  originally  fraudulent,  and  the 
rightful  owner  does  not  assert  his  claim  within  a  reason- 
able time,  the  honest  occupier  should  not  be  disturbed 
in  the  enjoyment  of  whatever  improvements  he  may 
have  made  for  his  own  benefit  and  that  of  the  community. 


6o  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§73 

73,  Rights  in  im-  Attempts  have  been  made  to  settle  the 
nrovements.  matter  by  letting  a  claimant  after  twenty 
years  of  another's  adverse  occupancy,  pay  for  the  im- 
provements. But  that  was  found  to  discourage  improve- 
ment, because  the  motive  to  improve  is  not  merely  to 
get  back  cost,  but  to  develop  a  profit. 

There  were  two  justifications  cited  for  the  proposed 
robbery  of  present  owners  of  land.  The  "original  rob- 
bery" one  being  disposed  of,  we  come  now  to  the  "un- 
earned increment"  one.     Wherever  population  grows, 

74.  The  unearned  land  increases  in  .value.  If  a  man  owns 
increment.  a  lot  worth  a  thousand  dollars  in  a  village 
of,  say,  a  thousand  people,  if  that  village  grows  to  con- 
tain two  thousand,  the  value  of  the  land  is  apt  to  be 
increased  by  the  coming  of  the  second  thousand,  and  it 
is  claimed  that  the  community  is  entitled  to  the  increased 
value,  because  the  increment  of  value  is  "unearned"  by 
the  owner  of  the  lot. 

This  good  reasoning  does  not  cover  the  case.  The 
second  thousand  people  do  not  do  anything  to  a  former 
resident's  lot,  and  certainly  the  first  thousand  did  not: 
so  how  can  either  have  any  claim  on  its  increased  value  ? 
The  owner  is  the  only  person  who  does  anything  to  it, 
even  if  he  only  pays  the  taxes  on  it.  If  he  starts  on  it 
an  industry  which  increases  the  population,  he  does 
something  to  increase  the  value  of  every  piece  of  property 
in  town,  and  he,  if  anybody,  is  entitled  to  the  "unearned 
increment  ".  But  the  unearned-increment  advocates 
claim  that  it  should  be  given  to  those  who  have  not 
built  anything — to  the  poor.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
,,,,„,,         increase  of  population  must  bring  all  the 

74  (a).  Not  char-  ...^^  ^    j_       ^^         -u        ■  c 

actenstic  of  land  unearned  increment  to  the  business  oi  a 
'^'°"^'  newspaper  or  a  store  or  a  blacksmith  shop, 

that  it  does  to  land,  and  more:  for  all  the  increment  that 
land  can  get,  it  must  get  from  increased  rent  paid  by 
business  of  some  sort,  even  if  that  business  be  farming. 
(Scientifically  speaking,  all  benefits  coming  from  the 
use  of  land  are  "rent",  even  if  the  owner  gets  them.) 
Every  man  who  does  his  work  well — every  capable 


§  74  <^]  Real  Property.  6i 

and  honest  man  who  does  something  to  improve  the 
lives  of  people,  raises  the  value  of  land  near  him ;  but 
that  gives  him  no  right  to  any  but  an  incidental  share 
in  the  benefit  he  confers  on  his  neighbors — except  that 
it  does  make  it  fair  that  his  neighbors  should  recipro- 
cate by  being  capable  and  honest  too,  and  so  conferring 
benefits  on  him. 

The  community  has  no  more  right,  then,  to  partly 
take  possession  of  land  by  taxing  away  the  unearned 
increment,  than  by  doing  the  same  to  the  unearned 
increment  of  the  blacksmith's  business  or  the  news- 
paperman's or  the  butcher's  or  baker's  or  candlestick- 
maker's. 

Under  the  present  system,  people  invest  in  unoccu- 
pied lands  on  the  chances  of  the  unearned  increment, 
and  pay  taxes  and  lie  out  of  interest.  If  government 
took  possession,  it  would  have  all  the  unimproved  land 
on  its  hands,  with  nobody  to  pay  taxes  on  it.  Of  all 
the  wild  follies  written  in  advocacy  of  government 
ownership,  the  wildest  is  the  assumption  pervading 
most  of  that  writing,  that  if  government  owned  the 
land  which  nobody  cares  to  use  now,  such  land  would 
all  come  into  use,  and  all  the  poor  be  made  rich  by  it. 

And  after  all  the  fuss,  it  is  very  uncertain  how  much 
unearned  increment  there  is  to  tax.  That  is  largely  a 
question  of  time  and  place.  Henry  George  claimed 
that  paying  the  rent  on  unearned  increment,  directly 
and  indirectly,  is  the  cause  of  virtually  all  poverty;  and 
yet  Superintendent  Harris,  in  the  Edticatio7ial  Review 
for  May,  1905,  says:  "Careful  investigation  has  shown 
that  [rent  of]  land  in  the  United  States  is  a  small  burden  : 
only  one  eighteenth  of  the  .  .  .  earnings  of  the  people 
in  1880 — two  and  one-fifth  cents  per  day  as  against 
average  production  of  more  than  forty  cents  a  day  for 
each  inhabitant."  I  know  of  no  later  calculation.  Tho 
one  could  be  made  without  much  difficulty,  it  would 
be  superfluous.  Professor  Mayo-Smith  says:  "From 
the  experience  of  England  ...  it  may  well  be  ques- 
tioned whether  the  present  ground-rents  of  agricultural 
land  represent  more  than  a  fair  return  for  improvements 


62  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  74  a 

made.  So  too,  in  regard  to  the  unearned  increment,  it 
appears  that  there  are  numerous  losses  as  well  as  gains, 
so  that  it  is  doubtful  whether,  on  the  average,  and  in 
the  long  run,  land  property  is  any  more  advantageous  in 
form  than  any  other  kind  of  property." 

The  whole  consideration  seems  to  show  that  the 
idea  of  everybody  being  entitled  to  a  piece  of  land, 
or  of  government  appropriating  it  for  the  general  good, 
is  simply  a  proposition  to  return  to  the 
abolish  privlTr  *°  half-civilized  communal  system — to  go 
ownership  are         back  to  where   India  and  Russia  are,  and 

rGirofirrGssiVBi  . 

wipe  out  all  the  stimulus  to  careful  and 
energetic  and  forethoughtful  management,  that  rests  in 
private  ownership. 

Aside  from  the  impossibility  that  a  man  should  do 
much  for  a  farm  that  he  holds  for  a  short  time,  the 
communal  landholding  of  backward  nations  helps  keep 
them  backward,  because  habit  and  the  chance  to  get 
land  for  nothing  incline  such  people  to  keep  on  working 
the  land:  therefore  fewer  people  are  led  to  manufac- 
turing, commerce,  and  the  other  pursuits  which  per- 
haps do  even  more  than .  the  primitive  and  sequestered 
one  of  farming,  to  advance  civilization. 

At  first  it  seems  a  paradox  that  while  in  America 
it  is  hard  to  get  people  to  take  up  the  abandoned  farms, 
in  Russia  it  is  hard  to  get  people  away  from  the  com- 
munal land.  The  explanation  is  that  the  Russian  and 
his  ancestors  have  been  so  long  under  the  deadening 
influence  of  communal  land  that  he  cannot  rise  above 
it;  but  the  American  has  always  been  planning  ahead 
for  his  own  land,  so  the  habit  of  thinking  a  long  way 
ahead  and  outside  of  his  daily  round  has  been  formed 
in  him  by  the  private  ownership  of  land. 

76.  Private  "rooerty  '^^^^  management  of  land  is  not  simply 
in  land  of  universal  the  owner's  lookout,  or  that  of  the  holder 
importance.  ^^^  ^^le  time  being.     If  he  does  not  manage 

well,  he  is  not  the  only  one  to  suffer.  Everybody  de- 
pends on  the  land,  whether  he  owns  any  or  not,  for  his 


§  77]  Real  Property.  63 

food  and  clothing  and  everything  he  uses,  except  what 
conies  from  the  sea.  So  it  is  to  everybody's  interest  that 
the  land  should  be  managed  in  the  most  careful  and  pro- 
ductive way ;  and  the  first  essential  to  careful  and  pro- 
ductive management  of  land  or  anything  else,  is  that 
a  man  should  be  sure  of  reaping  where  he  sows — of 
getting  the  results  of  what  he  plans — that  he  should 
own  the  thing  he  works  upon.  While  very  few  people 
own  the  things  they  work  upon — even  the  farms,  not 
to  speak  of  the  factories  and  shops,  it  is  not  unreason- 
able to  look  forward  to  the  time  when  most  men  will. 
It  is  true  that  while  hundreds  of  men  work  on  a  single 
railroad  or  in  a  single  factory,  or  even  on  a  single 
farm,  they  cannot  each  own  it,  but  things  are  rapidly 
shaping  themselves  so  that  each  can  own  a  share  in  it, 
if  he  is  economical  enough  and  wise  enough  to  do 
any  owning  at  all  (126). 

77.  Rights  in  land  ^^  Ought  to  be  plain  by  this  time  that 
limited  like  all  it  is  as  much  the  state's  duty  to  protect 
"^'^  ^"  rights  to  land,  as  rights  to  life  or  liberty. 

But  we  saw  that  it  sometimes  becomes  the  state's 
duty  to  limit  the  citizen's  rights  to  life  or  liberty,  and 
we  could  expect  to  find  the  same  true  in  regard  to  his 
rights  to  land. 

Whenever  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number 
requires  it,  the  state  should  take  the  citizen's  land, 
and  despite  the  theories  we  have  been  considering, 
experience  seems  to  prove  that  a  case  where  the  state 
should  take  it  without  paying  for  it  is  not  apt  to  arise. 
At  least  the  fathers  of  our  government  were  so  well 
satisfied  that  it  never  can  (in  this  being  less  wise  than 
the  Henry  Georgians  think  themselves),  that  as  early 
as  1 79 1,  it  was  provided  in  the  Constitution  that  land 
taken  by  the  National  Government  for  public  uses 
must  always  be  paid  for.* 

The  two  principal  sets  of  circumstances  under  which 
land  is  so  taken,  are  when  the  right  to  take  it  at  a 

*  Amendment  V. 


64  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  78 

78.  Rights  of  fair  valuation  is  given  to  citizens  working 
Eminent  Domain,  for  the  public  accommodation — to  rail- 
road companies  and  water  companies,  for  instance; 
and  when  the  state  itself  obliges  holders  to  sell  their 
land  for  the  use  of  legislatures,  courts,  custom-houses, 
post-offices,  police-stations,  forts,  barracks,  dockyards, 
roads,  railroads  (where  the  state  builds  them),  and 
many  other  purposes. 

The  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number  requires 
that  a  railroad  should  take  a  direct  way,  instead  of  being 
obliged  to  zigzag  only  where  people  are  willing  to  let  it 
go;  and  so  the  state  may  rightly  enable  a  railroad  to 
cut  a  man's  farm  in  two,  or  perhaps  tear  down  his  very 
home;  but  it  must  compensate  him.  The  government 
usually  decides  through  Some  form  of  legislation,  when 
the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number  requires  a 
proposed  railroad;  and  if  the  justice  of  the  law  is  dis- 
puted, it  must  also  be  passed  upon  by  the  courts.  Be- 
sides deciding  that  the  road  would  be  for  the  greatest 
good  of  the  greatest  number,  the  state  must  also  give 
the  authority  to  lay  out  the  road,  and  compel  people  to 
sell  the  right  of  way  at  reasonable  prices.  Where  the 
parties  cannot  agree  on  values,  the  courts  appoint  com- 
missioners to  fix  them. 

The  right  of  the  state  to  take  land  or  authorize  citizens 
to  take  it,  is  called  the  right  of  Eminent  Domain. 

One  other  condition  places  the  citizen's  rights  in  land 
at  the  disposal  of  the  government:  land  can  be  taxed 
of  course,  like  everything  else,  and  sold  if  the  taxes 
are  not  paid. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

LAW    OF    REAL    PROPERTY. 

Now  we  have  some  notion  of  the  rights  of  property, 
especially  as  concerns  the  land.     Next  let  us  consider 
the  rules  under  which  rights  are  protected  and  trans- 
ferred.    Those  rules  are  called  the  Law. 
79.  The  Law  in  No  man  ever  had  a  thorough  knowledge 

g^"^'"^''  of  the  law.     It  is  the  most  colossal  product 

of  the  human  mind.  Yet  many  men  have  thoroughly 
known  its  outlines  and  some  of  its  parts.  To  have  a 
good  working  knowledge,  one  must  know  some  dozens 
of  big  volumes  well,  and  also  know  how  to  consult 
some  thousands.  It  need  hardly  be  said  that  we  can 
get  but  very  slight  notions  of  it  here,  but  those  slight 
ones  may  be  well  worth  while. 

Every  citizen  should  have  some  appreciation  of  where 
this  immense  mass  of  wisdom  and  justice  comes  from, 
and  an  adequate  appreciation  of  it  stirs  the  admiration, 
the  reverence  and  even  the  affection  of  every  liberal 
mind.  The  law  has  been  evolved  slowly  from  many 
sources.  The  four  principal  ones  have  been,  first,  Con- 
stitutions— agreements  made  by  peoples  as  to  what  sort 
of  executives,  legislators  and  judges  they  shall  have, 
and  what  powers  those  functionaries  shall  have ;  second, 
Statutes,  rules  made  by  legislative  bodies — from  primi- 
tive tribal  assemblies  down  to  modern  parliaments,  con- 
gresses, and  state  legislatures  (perhaps  in  these  we  should 
even  include  the  law-making  bodies  of  local  govern- 
ments) ;  third,  the  Administrative  Law — the  decisions 
and  practices  of  the  executive  or  administration  in  the 

65 


66  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§79 

course  of  its  business — such  as  the  rules  of  the  treasury, 
the  custom-house,  the  post -office  and  the  other  depart- 
ments :  many  of  these  have  been  confirmed  by  courts  or 
legislatures  or  custom,  and  so  become  permanent  parts 
of  the  national  policy;  and  fourth,  the  Common  Law — 
the  decisions  made  by  judges  (the  judges  in  primitive 
times  having  generally  been  priests).  These  decisions 
have  been  handed  down,  first  by  tradition,  and  in 
modern  times  by  a  very  thorough  system  of  printed 
reports,  with  elaborate  summaries  (called  digests)  and 
indexes.  These  volumes  of  reports  now  contain  the 
main  bulk  of  the  law.  They  are  consulted  in  all  im- 
portant trials,  and  arguments  and  decisions  are  based 
on  the  points  of  the  case  in  hand  which  have  been 
decided  in  previous  similar  cases.  Moreover,  the  grow- 
ing wisdom  of  the  ages  has  been  shaped  into  a  ntimber 
of  maxims  that  have  great  authority  in  the  law,  some 
of  which  we  shall  see  hereafter  (85,  182,  186,  191,  205, 
214,  214/,  385).  Many  of  them  are  in  Latin,  dating 
back  to  the  time  when  our  legal  proceedings  were  gen- 
erally conducted  in  Latin — some  of  them  even  back 
to  Rome.  From  judges'  decisions  and  maxims,  and 
occasionally  from  statutes,  learned  writers  have  made 
many  comipendiums  showing  which  way  the  weight  of 
opinion  has  gone  in  various  classes  of  cases.  These 
constitute  what  are  called' the  "text -books",  on  such 
subjects,  for  example,  as  Real  Property,  Contracts, 
Evidence,  Corporations,  and  hosts  of  others. 

As  Constitutions  prescribe  what  the  officers  shall  be, 
and  their  powers,  all  other  bodies  of  law  are  made  by 
those  whom  the  people  elect  to  make  them.  All  other 
powers  are  reserved  to  the  people.  If  officers  want 
more  powers  than  the  constitution  gives  them,  the 
constitution  must  be  amended  or  a  new  one  made. 
Constitutions,  with  their  amendments,  are  voted  on  by 
the  people.  Countries  like  Russia  or  Turkey,  without 
constitutions,  are  governed  by  those  who  seize  the 
power  or  inherit  it. 

In  England,  Parliament  has  power  to  change  the 
constitution,  but  the  people  have  power  at  any  time 


§  8o]  Law  of  Real  Property.  67 

to  change  parliament,  not  needing  to  wait  for  the  regu- 
lar time,  as  we  do. 

As  the  administration  is  under  the  control  of  the 
constitution,  and  to  some  extent  under  the  control  of 
the  legislature  and  even  of  the  courts,  administrative 
law  is  constantly  merging  into  constitutional  law, 
statute  law  and  the  common  law. 

While  the  president,  or  any  one  of  his  cabinet,  or  any 
officer  acting  under  any  of  them,  must  to  some  extent 
make  his  own  decisions  and  shape  his  own  policy,  he 
must  do  it  within  the  lines  laid  down  by  the  constitu- 
tion and  the  laws;  and  anybody  thinking  himself 
aggrieved  by  any  public  officer,  generally  has  some 
sort  of  right  of  appeal  to  the  courts.  Similarly,  judges 
under  the  common  law  must  decide  in  accordance  with 
the  statutes  and  the  constitution;  and  framers  of 
statute  law,  while  they  can  override  common  law  (sub- 
ject to  the  danger  of  having  its  weight  finally  lead  to 
neglect  or  repeal  of  the  statute),  cannot  override  con- 
stitutional law:  if  they  do,  the  courts  will  declare  the 
statute  null. 

The  order,  then,  of  the  four  bodies  of  law,  in  respect 
of  their  control,  each  but  the  last  controlling  what  is 
under  it,  is  Constitutional  Law,  Statute  Law,  Common 
Law,  and  Administrative  Law.  Constitutions  control 
legislatures,  judiciaries  and  executives;  legislatures  con- 
trol judiciaries  and  executives;  judiciaries  control  ex- 
ecutives. When  executives  a,ttempt  to  control  any  of 
the  other  powers,  as  they  are  often,  especially  lately, 
accused  of  doing,  they  incur  disapprobation,  and  risk 
impeachment  and  deposition.  Similarly  with  judges 
(unless  they  have  constitutions  at  their  backs)  when 
they  place  themselves  in  opposition  to  legislatures,  or, 
of  course,  when  they  attempt  undue  control  of  execu- 
tives. 

80  Real  Estate  ^^^  ^'^^^  begin  our  consideration  of  the 

and"  Personal  law  of  property  in  land,  with  a  few  ele- 

Property.  mentary  general  notions.     As  you  will  re- 

member, the  name  given  to  property  rights  in  land  and 


68  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  So 

the  things  fixed  to  it,  is  Real  Property,  or  Real  Estate, 
or,  for  short.  Realty.  Movable  property  is  called  Per- 
sonal Property.  One  reason  for  calling  land  and  the 
things  fixed  to  it,  Real  Property,  was  probably  because 
it  is  the  source  of  all  other  property,  and  it  looks  as 
if  another  reason  was  because  land  is  less  apt  than  other 
property  to  slip  out  of  sight. 

But  the  rights  in  real  property  are  not  actually 
more  "real"  than  the  rights  in  personal  property.  The 
name  deceives  most  people.  Real  estate  usually  fluctu- 
ates more  in  value  than  personal  property,  and  is 
probably  oftener  hard  to  find  a  buyer  for. 
81.  Laws  protecting  First,  then,  as  to  protecting  the  enjoy- 
ownership.  ment  of    property  rights    in  real  estate: 

anybody  may  properly  enter  one's  house  or  grounds 
for  any  reasonable  purpose,  for  instance,  to  make  a 
81  (a).  Damages  visit  or  a  short  cut  on  foot  or  with  a  team, 
for  trespass.  unless  the  owucr  objects.  But  if  he  does 
object,  unless  the  person  were  doing  some  real  harm, 
the  juries  would  probably  give  less  damages  than  a 
lawyer  would  cost. 

81  (b).  Right  of  If  o^ie  has  posted  up  a  notice  forbidding 

ejectment.  persons  to  enter,  greater  damages  would 

probably  be  given.  If  the  owner  orders  a  person  off, 
and  he  refuses  to  go,  the  owner  can  use  force,  but 
not  enough  to  do  serious  injury.  If  he  cannot  get 
rid  of  a  trespasser  without  doing  serious  injury,  he 
may  have  to  get  an  order  from  a  court  prohibiting  him 
from  staying  or  coming;  and  if  he  violates  that,  he 
will  be  shut  up  for  contempt  of  court.  An  officer  of 
the  law  can  use  all  the  force  necessary  to  take  his  man, 
even  if  it  kills  him;  but  he  must  be  careful  not  to  use 
more  than  necessary.  If  an  officer  cannot  get  a  tres- 
passer off,  he  has  a  right  to  call  upon  everybody  to  help 
him.  If  in  the  course  of  the  argument,  the  stubborn 
gentleman  seems  likely  to  injure  somebody  else, 
everybody  has  the  right  of  self-defence,  up  to  any 
point. 

If  a  man  squats  on  land  and  builds  a  shanty  there, 
the  owner  can  remove  him    and    his  shanty,  if  it  is 


§  82  6]  Law  of  Real  Property.  69 

possible  to  do  so  without  violence.  If  it  is  not,  the 
owner  must  appeal  to  a  court  to  order  him  off. 

If  during  an  owner's  absence,  somebody  has  built 
upon  and  improved  land,  claiming  it  as  his — even  under 
a  mistake,  the  owner  may  go  to  court  for  an  order  of 
ejectment,  which  will  be  granted  unless  the  occupant 
shows  a  good  case. 

82.  Laws  affecting  Now  as  to  transferring  property  rights 
transfers,  {^  land.     Rights  in  personal  property  are 

generally  recognized  by  possession — the  property  usu- 
ally (we  will  deal  with  some  exceptions  later)  being 
near  the  person  of  its  owner,  and  transferred  by  delivery. 

But  one  cannot  deliver  a  piece  of  land,  and  it  can- 
not always  be  near  enough  the  person  of  the  owner 
to  be  recognized  as  his,  unless  it  happens  to  be  his 
home  estate  or  the  location  of  his  business.  Hence  in 
old  times,  ownership  in  real  estate  was  transferred  and 
recognized  by  the  man  who  made  the  grant,  and  his 
grantee,  walking  around  the  property  together,  gener- 
ally with  witnesses,  and  then  the  grantor  delivering  to 
the  grantee  a  token  of  possession,  such  as  a  piece  of  the 
soil  or  a  twig  from  one  of  the  trees. 

In  your  reading,  you  may  often  come  across  a  tech- 
nical phrase  for  this  ceremony,  which  was  called  "livery 
82(a).  Liueryof  of  scisin."  Livcry  is  plainly  connected 
seisin.  with  delivery,  and  seisin  is  connected  with 

the  fact  that  in  early  times  (and  even  now  in  law  phrase) 
the  owner  was  said  to  be  "seised"  of  the  property — a 
suggestion  that  in  rude  times  "seisin"  was  not  always 
connected  with  "livery."  But  livery  of  seisin  is  not 
the  usual  method,  even  in  our  gentler  age,  tho  it  does 
survive  in  some  remote  and  primitive  regions,  even 
where  the  present  method  has  grown  up  beside  it. 

The  present  method  is  by  the  transfer 
frauds %fuiHn°/  of  a  Written  "deed",  of  which  a  copy  is 
of'tllUflr^"'^^  usually  registered  at  the  chief  town  of  the 
county.  Certain  statutes  to  guard  against 
frauds  (the  principal  one  of  which,  generally  known  as 
the  "Statute  of  Frauds",  was  passed  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  II.)  provide  that  contracts  relating  to  real  estate, 


70  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  82  b 

and  certain  other  things  which  we  will  consider  later 
(198),  must  be  in  writing,  tho  now  in  many  states, 
statute  permits  a  verbal  lease  for  a  year,  and  sometimes 
longer.  Usually,  now,  when  two  parties  have  agreed  on 
a  sale  of  real  estate,  they  at  once  put  their  agreement  in 
writing — generally  by  filling  out  and  signing  a  printed 
form  that  the  lawyers'  experience  has  led  the  stationers 
to  prepare,  and  the  purchaser  generally  pays  something 
on  account,  which  will  be  forfeited  if  he  does  not  carry 
out  the  contract. 

You  may  wonder  what  we  have  to  do  with  a  law 
passed  in  England  under  Charles  II.  We  were  gener- 
ally governed  by  the  English  laws  until  the  Revolution ; 
and  when  we  dissolved  our  connection  with  Great 
Britain,  each  state  enacted  that  the  previous  laws  of 
England  should  prevail  within  its  borders,  when  not 
in  conflict  with  laws  made  by  its  own  authorities.  All 
later  states  have  so  enacted,  but  Louisiana,  which  is 
still  under  much  of  the  law  she  received  from  France. 

To  return:  part -payment  is  often  supposed  necessary 
to  make  a  written  contract  valid,  but  it  is  not:  for, 
as  we  saw,  under  the  Statute  of  Frauds  writing  alone 
makes  the  contract  valid,  if  it  is  valid  in  other  respects 
which  we  will  consider  later. 

82  cc;.  Contracts  The  Written  contract  of  sale  usually 
of  Sale.  recites   that    in    consideration  *   of   blank 

dollars  paid  to  A  by  B,  A  agrees  to  sell,  and  B  agrees  to 
buy,  a  piece  of  land  described;  that  the  price  shall  be 
blank  dollars,  so  much  payable  on  the  signing  of  this 
contract,  so  much  on  the  delivery  of  the  deed  at  some 
specified  time  and  place,  and  (if  there  are  any  deferred 
payments)  so  much  at  other  times  specified,  the  deferred 
payments  to  be  secured  by  a  mortgage  (83). 

Oeerfs  ^  deed  is  any  instrument  sealed  as  well 

assigned.     This  does  not  mean  sealed  up : 

in  old  times  before  men  generally — especially  the  great 

fighting  characters  who  owned  most  of  the  property, 

*  There  may  be  other  considerations,  and  it  might  be  worth 
the  reader's  while  to  anticipate  the  order  of  statement  by  reading 
regarding  them  in  Section  179  fE. 


§  82  /]  Law  of  Real  Property.  71 

knew  how  to  write  their  names,  it  was  the  custom  to 
authenticate  written  instruments  by  putting  on  a 
seal  after  words  declaring  that  the  instrument  was 
the  parties'  free  act  and  deed;  and  even  after  it  became 
general  to  sign  the  name,  on  specially  formal  instru- 
ments it  remained  customary  to  put  the  seal  also,  and  the 
name  "deed"  was  retained  for  all  instruments  under 
seal,  tho  in  popular  use  it  generally  means  a  conveyance 
of  land. 

^2  (e).  Seal  and  Generally  the  seal  need  not  be  an  im- 
its  effect.  pression   of   some   device   peculiar  to   the 

grantor,  and  on  some  impressible  substance:  in  most 
of  the  states,  any  spot  of  some  adhesive  substance  will 
do;  and  in  many  of  the  states  a  mere  scrawl  of  the 
pen,  with  the  word  "seal"  written  in  it,  is  enough; 
or  perhaps  even  without  that  word,  if  the  position  and 
nature  of  the  scrawl  make  its  purpose  plain. 

An  instrument  under  seal  has  distinctions  other  than 
in  name,  from  one  not  under  seal.  Where  an  instru- 
ment is  under  seal,  the  court  takes  it  for  granted  that 
the  price  or  other  consideration  (i  79-181)  was  fair — the 
grantee  need  not  prove  that  it  was,  and  the  grantor 
is  not  permitted  to  disprove  it,  unless  mistake  or  fraud 
is  alleged. 

Moreover,  a  person  can  claim  damages  under  a  con- 
tract under  seal,  till  some  time  fixed  by  statute — in 
most  states  twenty  years,  has  elapsed,  while  under 
other  contracts,  six  years  is  the  usual  limit.  (See  also 
82  m,  iqo.) 

Not  all  deeds  convey  an  interest  in  land :  instruments 
for  other  purposes  are  often  put  under  seal. 
82  (f).  Essentials        The  laws  regarding  deeds  vary  in  dififer- 
of  deeds.  ^^^  statcs,  but  usually  the  points  essential 

in  a  deed  of  real  estate  are  that  it  name  the  grantor  and 
the  grantee,  preferably  with  the  town,  village  or  city 
of  the  residence  of  each,  clearly  describe  the  property, 
name  the  consideration  for  the  transfer,  clearly  state 
that  the  land  is  transferred  to  the  grantee  to  be  held 
by  him,  and  it  often  has  been  decided  by  the  courts  that 
unless    property   is   conveyed   to   the   grantee   and  his 


72  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  82  / 

heirs,  only  a  life-estate  is  conveyed.  Moreover,  a  deed, 
in  order  to  be  recorded  (which,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter, 
is  important)  must  be  witnessed  by  a  notary — that  is, 
must  contain  a  notary's  certificate  that  the  signature 
was  acknowledged  before  him;  and  if  it  is  not  to  be 
recorded  in  the  county  where  the  notary  acts,  his  signa- 
ture must  be  attested  by  a  certificate  from  the  clerk 
of  the  county. 

82  (g).  Dower  and  One  Other  point  is  necessary  if  the 
Courtesy.  grantor  is  married.  •    In  many  of  the  states, 

if  a  married  male  grantor  dies,  his  widow  would  have  an 
interest  for  her  life  (called  her  dower),  in  one  third  of 
the  property,  unless  she  has  relinquished  it  in  the  deed; 
tho  in  a  few  states,  this  interest  cannot  exist  in  any 
realty  but  the  homestead,  and  such  other  realty  as 
the  husband  may  die  possessed  of.  The  latter  policy 
seems  the  better,  as  the  necessity  of  having  the  wife 
join  in  every  deed  given  by  her  husband,  is  seldom  of 
any  real  value  to  her,  and  often  involves  much  trouble 
and  delay,  when  she  is  ill  or  away  from  home,  and  the 
custom  is  also  in  restraint  of  trade. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  some  of  the  states,  the  old 
law  still  exists  that  if  the  grantor  is  a  married  woman 
and  should  die,  and  if  she  had  had  a  child  by  her  surviv- 
ing husband,  unless  he  had  joined  in  the  deed  he  would 
be  entitled  to  the  use  of  the  property  for  life — called  the 
courtesy  of  it. 

Z2(h)  Value  of  While  the  steps  already  recited  are  the 
established  only  ones  neccssary  to  a  deed,  others  are 

forms.  desirable.     Questions  regarding  deeds  have 

been  coming  before  the  courts  for  hundreds  of  years, 
and  lawyers  have  been  shaping  the  expression  of  deeds 
so  as  to  prevent  such  questions  arising  after  the  trans- 
action :  so  it  is  very  well  to  follow  forms  that  experience 
has  approved.  Yet  there  have  been  many  embarrass- 
ments regarding  this:  the  lawyers  have  gradually 
loaded  up  forms  of  deeds  with  so  many  provisions  and 
so  many  legal  phrases,  that  common  patience  could 
not  read  them,  or  mere  common  sense  understand 
them.     This  experience    is  by  no  means  restricted  to 


§  82  ^]  Law  of  Real  Property.  73 

deeds.  The  whole  business  world  knows  it.  Business 
men  who  habitually  make  written  contracts  for  any- 
specific  purpose,  and  often  print  them,  find  that  new 
features  keep  arising  in  the  course  of  experience,  which 
they  try  to  provide  for  in  subsequent  contracts.  The 
number  of  these  provisions  often  so  swells  the  printed 
forms,  that  a  fresh  start  with  simple  ones  is  found  de- 
sirable, even  at  the  risk  of  leaving  some  contingencies 
to  be  settled  when  they  arise. 

To  remedy  this  unwieldy  growth  of  legal  forms,  the 
most  progressive  states  have  provided  by  legislative 
statute,  brief  and  simple  forms  for  both  deeds  and 
mortgages. 

But  their  use  is  probably  not  imperative  anywhere, 
but  only  recommended  and  given  the  full  sanction  of 
the  law;  yet  timid  people  who  want  to  provide  in 
advance  for  everything  that  never  happens,  can  make 
their  instruments  as  labored  as  they  please. 
82  (i).  Registry,  Rcal-cstatc  salcs  are  usually  completed 

Title-search,  some  wccks  after  the  contract  is  made,  be- 
cause delivery  and  possession  cannot  be  as  simple  as  with 
personal  property,  and  it  takes  time  to  arrange  for  them. 
If  a  man  has  a  piece  of  personal  property  in  his  posses- 
sion, and  delivers  it  to  you  for  a  consideration,  the  law 
will  not  go  back  of  that  delivery  for  any  reason  except 
the  property's  being  stolen.  But  a  small  portion  of  the 
world's  real  estate  is  in  plain  possession  of  anybody — 
a  man  driving  with  you  in  the  country,  or  even  stand- 
ing with  you  in  a  portion  of  the  city,  could  easily  say: 
"This  property  is  mine,"  and  sell  it  to  you,  when  it 
was  really  somebody's  else,  or  mortgaged  to  some- 
body, or  burdened  with  some  other  rights  of  somebody. 
Consequently,  in  early  times,  as  writing  became  gen- 
eral, records  were  made  of  the  ownership  of  property. 
They  began,  in  our  race,  with  William  the  Conqueror's 
Domesday  Book.  As  our  country  was  settled,  each 
commonwealth  parceled  out  the  land  among  the  people, 
and  gave  them  deeds,  which  were  put  on  record  (or 
registered — the  terms  are  used  interchangeably),  usu- 
ally in  the  county  where  the  land  is  situated.      Each 


74  ^/^^  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  82  ^ 

transfer  since  has  been  recorded.  When  any  important 
contract  affecting  land  is  made,  the  grantee,  if  he  has 
ordinary  sense,  has  the  records  searched  to  find  if  the 
title  is  good — that  is,  if  his  grantor  has  a  good  deed 
from  a  chain  of  persons  who  had  good  deeds  back  to 
the  first  grant  by  the  state.  He  or  his  lawyer  also 

looks  into  the  record  of  mortgages,  taxes,  and  other 
serious  burdens  on  property,  to  see  if  the  property 
in  question  is  free  from  them,  and  writes  to  the  clerks 
of  all  the  courts  in  the  county,  to  see  if  they  have 
any  unsatisfied  judgments. 
„„,..,  ^       ,         A   iudgment   in  this   sense   is   a   decree 

82  (J).  Judgments.       r  ^  n  •       ^        i 

of  a  court,  usually  against  a  loser  m  a  suit, 
which  is  put  on  record,  and  which  makes  the  property 
of  the  person  against  whom  it  is  issued,  liable  for  the 
sum  decreed  by  the  court. 

The  principal  Statute  of  Limitations  was 
of  [imitations^  passed  in  the  reign  of  Charles  I.,  and  the 
^?/''^ff!f„"„l'„'       effect  of  it  on  real  estate,  in  nearly  all  cases, 

Appurtenances.  ^ .  „     ,  ,       ,  .    ■' 

unless  modified  by  later  statute,  is  to  prevent 
any  claim  taking  effect  unless  it  is  urged  within  twenty 
years  of  any  adverse  holder  taking  possession.  After 
anybody  has  held  land  unopposed  for  twenty  years,  the 
law  presumes  that  he  had  a  grant  of  which  evidence 
has  been  lost.  So  if  the  title  is  found  clear  for  twenty 
years,  it  is  often  considered  a  good  risk  (72). 

When  a  right  has  been  used  without  dispute  for  the 
time  required  by  the  statutes  of  limitations  in  the  state 
where  the  land  is  situated,  it  becomes  a  right  by  pre- 
scription. Then  the  right  becomes  legal,  even  if  it 
covers  the  ownership  of  the  property.  Such  rights, 
however,  are  often  for  privileges  less  than  these  of 
ownership,  and  are  then  called  appurtenances  (92). 
They  sometimes  may  so  encumber  land — :for  instance, 
by  preventing  building  in  certain  spots,  as  to  be  seri- 
ous clouds  on  title. 

82  ca  Title  In-  You  can  insure  against  a  bad  title,  just 

surance.  a,s  you  can  against  a  fire,  but  the  com- 

pany generally  first  hunts  up  the  title,  for  its  own  sake, 
the  the  older  companies    have   searched   titles  of  so 


§  82  m]  Law  of  Real  Property.  75 

many  pieces  of  land  that  they  often  have  to  search 
only  back  to  the  time  of  some  recent  search,  besides, 
of  course,  making  inquiries  regarding  judgments  (82/) 
to  the  clerks  of  the  courts. 

Unless  the  title  is  insured,  so  many  questions  are  apt 
to  come  up,  that  usually  a  good  lawyer  is  needed  to 
make  the  search,  and  if  there  is  a  cloud  on  the  title, 
82  Cm;,  Clouds  on  either  the  trade  is  called  off,  and  the 
^'*'^-  earnest-money  returned,  with  interest,  or 

the  parties  agree  to  keep  the  trade  open  for  some  fixed 
time,  in  the  hope  of  paying  off  incumbrances  or  other- 
wise clearing  the  title. 

This  second  agreement,  for  delay,  should  be  in  writing, 
tho,  there  being  one  written  agreement  already,  the 
courts  would  probably  wink  at  a  reasonable  delay  in 
making  another,  as  some  time  would  be  needed  to  settle 
its  conditions. 

As  the  adjournment  of  passing  the  title  is  probably 
for  the  mutual  convenience,  the  mutuality  would  gen- 
erally be  deemed  a  consideration,  tho  the  general  view 
is  that  the  original  consideration  holds  over  for  the 
adjournment. 

If  the  title  is  found  all  clear  of  outside  claims,  on 
the  appointed  day,  the  grantor  gives  the  grantee  a 
deed. 

If  the  deed  is  delivered  subject  to  conditions  not 
expressed  in  it,  such  as  the  performance  of  some  act 
by  the  grantee  before  the  deed  can  take  effect,  the 
conditions  are  ineffective.  All  the  provisions  of  an 
instrument  under  seal  take  effect  upon  delivery.  Tho 
one  not  under  seal  can  be  effectively  delivered  subject 
to  any  lawful  conditions,  such  as  to  take  effect  on  a 
certain  day  if  certain  prices  riile,  or  even  if  the  weather 
is  fit  for  certain  operations.  The  only  way  to  make 
limiting  conditions  effective  in  an  instrument  under 
seal,  is  to  put  them  in  the  instrument  itself,  or  to  leave 
it  with  a  third  party,  to  be  delivered  only  when  the 
conditions  are  fulfilled.  This  is  called  putting  it  "in 
escrow" — reducing  it  to  the  condition,  for  the  time 
being,  of  a  mere  "  scroll  "  or  memorandum. 


76  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  82  w 

S2(n).  Delivery  of      If   the  grantor  dies  before  the  deed   is 
''^^''-  given  to  the  grantee  or  to  somebody  else 

for  him,  the  deed  takes  no  effect,  but  the  proposed 
grantee  can  call  upon  the  heirs  to  give  him  a  nev/ 
deed,  and  if  he  does  not  get  it,  he  has  a  good  claim  on 
the  estate  for  any  money  that  he  may  have  paid  in 
advance. 
„^  .,  ^  A  mortgage  is  a  right  to  sell  a  piece  of 

83.  Mortgages.  ^  i  i       -r    xi, 

^  ^  property,  real   or  personal,   if  the  owner 

of  it  (the  mortgagor)  does  not,  by  a  certain  time,  pay, 

a  debt  due  the  person  holding  the  right  (the  mortgagee). 

Originally  all  of  the  proceeds  of  such  a  sale  belonged 
to  the  mortgagee,  but  now  the  excess,  if  any,  above 
the  loan  with  interest  and  expenses,  belongs  to  the 
mortgagor. 

The  form  of  a  mortgage  does  not  usually  differ  from 
that  of  a  deed,  until  near  the  end.  Originally  a  mort- 
gage was  made  by  simply  handing  over  a  deed,  with  an 
agreement  that  the  land  could  be  redeemed  -on  paying 
the  borrowed  money ;  and  even  now  the  mortgage  con- 
veys the  property  just  like  a  deed,  and  then  provides 
that  the  mortgagor  can  have  the  property  back  if 
he  pays  the  debt  named  in  a  certain  bond  (or  perhaps 
onl}^  promissory  note)  which  accompanies  the  mortgage. 
„    ^  The   difference  between   a  bond   and   a 

83  (a).  Bonds.  .  ^        •       xi,     ^  t,         j     •  a 

promissory  note  is  that  a  bond  is  under 
seal  (82  d)  and  may  hold  its  maker  to  the  performance 
of  some  other  act  than  the  payment  of  money,  tho  it 
always  provides  for  the  payment  of  some  value  in  case 
of  non-performance.  A  promissory  note,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  not  under  seal,  and  never  promises  anything 
but  the  payment  of  money  at  a  specified  time. 

The  right  to  redeem  the  property  under  mortgage  is 
called  the  equity  of  rejiemption 

Before  accepting  a  mortgage,  it  is  worth  while  to 
be  sure  of  a  good  title,  just  as  before  taking  a  deed: 
if  there  are  any  previous  mortgages  or  judgments,  they 
have  to  be  satisfied  before  the  new  mortgage  takes 
effect,  and  the  mortgagee  should  see  that  all  taxes 
levied  previous  to  the  mortgage,  and  during  its  life, 


§  85]  J^CL'^  of  Real  Property.  77 

are  paid  by  the  mortgagor :  for  they  must  be  paid  before 
the  mortgage  can  be  paid. 

A  lease  is  a  right  to  use  real  estate  for 
a   given   or   ascertainable   time,   generally 
conditioned  on  the  payment  of  rent. 

The  same  precautions  of  form  and  search  accompany 
a  lease,  as  a  deed  or  mortgage,  except  as  the  interest 
is  smaller. 

A  deed  or  mortgage  or  lease  being  made  out  in  proper 

form,  signed,  sealed  and  delivered,  the  transaction  is 

closed   as   between   the   parties,   but    not    as    between 

oc  D'  u.  ftui  A  them  and  outsiders.  As  regards  those 
85.  Rights  of  third        .   ,  ,  .  .        °    -  .        ,    , 

parties  regarding  Without  Other  notice,  a  piece  ot  land  be- 
''^S'^*'*^'  longs  to  the  person  in  whose  name  it  is 

registered,  and  if  A,  after  giving  a  deed  of  it  to  B,  were 
to  sell  or  mortgage  it  to  C,  and  C,  without  knowledge  of 
the  existence  of  B's  deed,  were  to  get  his  instrument  re- 
corded before  B,  it  would  be  good  against  B's  earlier 
instrument  not  recorded;  but  record  is  notice  to  every- 
body. The  time  of  record  is  drawn  so  finely  that  on 
any  recorded  instrument,  the  county  register  always 
endorses  the  minute  of  the  hour  of  the  day  he  receives 
it,  and  it  is  considered  as  recorded  that  minute. 

If  C  gets  on  record  first,  giving  him  the  property 
would  not  ordinarily  be  unfair  to  B  who  had  paid  his 
money  first,  because  if  B,  by  neglecting  to  record  his 
instrument,  had  left  room  for  C  to  suppose  that  A  was 
still  the  owner,  it  would  be  B's  fault  that  C  had  parted 
with  his  money  to  A;  and  so  if  either  B  or  C  is  to 
suffer,  plainly  it  should  be  B.  There  is  a  general 
maxim  of  the  law  (79)  governing  such  cases,  to  the 
effect  that:  "'The  law  helps  those  who  are  wide  awake, 
not  those  who  are  dozing"  * — in  this  case,  it  helps  the 
man  who  gets  on  record  first,  not  the  one  who  goes  to 
sleep  over  his  deed. 

Yet  creditors  could  not  seize  the  property  of  A  if  they 
had  given  him  credit  supposing  the  land  was  his,  while 
B  held  an  unrecorded  deed  of  it,  always  provided  that 

*  Vigilantihus,  non  dormientibus ,  subveniunt  jures. 


yS  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  86 

_     .    all  parties  had  acted  honestly  and  could 

86.  Effect  of  Fraud,  p^^^g    it.     But    an    unrecorded    deed    or 

mortgage  always  is  subject  to  suspicion  of  fraudulent 
intent  to  make  the  grantor  or  mortgagor  still  appear 
to  own  the  land,  and  so  keep  a  better  aspect  on  his 
credit  than  it  really  deserves;  and  this  suspicion  of 
fraud  might  be  very  readily  accepted  in  court  if  later 
creditors  tried  to  get  hold  of  the  land  on  the  ground  of 
fraud  in  the  unrecorded  deed  or  mortgage. 

_^  ,     ,  ..a,  Even    such    a   formal    instrument    as    a 

87.  Land  differs  ,  ,  ^  ^  .  -  ^^  j  r 
from  negotiable       deed  can  be  set  aside  on  the  ground  oi 

P^P®""^'  fraud,  and  so  can  any  instrument  or  con- 

tract whatever,  except  in  a  few  rare  cases  where  a 
title  to  negotiable  paper  (a  bill  of  exchange,  bank 
check,  or  promissory  note)  has  passed  on  to  an  innocent 
holder.  Exception  is  made  in  some  stich  cases, 
because  it  has  been  found  better  to  run  the  risk  of  an 
occasional  fraud  than  to  choke  the  avenues  of  commerce 
by  impeding  the  rapid  transfer  of  such  instruments. 
Transfers  of  land  and  even  of  merchandise  do  not 
occur  with  such  frequency  and  rapidity, 
no  T   u  ■    1  It  may  be  worth  while  to  know  a  pecu- 

88.  Technical  mean-,.         ,         -^  .     ,  ,    ,,  ,,        ro, 

in-of  "Estate"  in   liar  legal  use  of  the  word     estate    .      ihe 
'  lawyers  use  the  term  "estate  in  land"  to 

signify  the  quantity  and  quality  of  an  interest.  For 
instance,  a  mortgagor  and  mortgagee  and  a  lessee  may 
each  have  an  estate  in  the  same  piece  of  land,  so  may  a 
widow  have  a  dower  estate,  or  a  widower  a  courtesy 
estate,  and  perhaps  a  creditor  may  have  a  judgment,  all 
in  respect  to  the  same  piece  of  land.  The  largest  pos- 
sible estate  is  called  a  fee  simple — when  the  land  belongs 
to  a  man  and  his  heirs  or  assigns  forever.  The  person 
holding  that  can  carve  out  all  the  lesser  estates  from 
it  if  he  sees  fit.  Sometimes  he  carves  out  so  many  that 
the  fee  simple  is  worth  less  than  nothing — for  instance, 
he  may  give  a  mortgage  for  more  than  his  estate  is 
worth,  or  even  let  taxes  accumulate  against  it  until 
they  amount  to  more  than  the  fee  is  worth. 

The  estate  of  a  lessee  is  technically  called  in  the  law, 
an  estate  for  a  year,  or   from    year  to  year,   or  for 


§  89  a]  Law  of  RealJ^roperty.  79 

years.  An  estate  for  a  single  year  or 
es^tates^fo/vearT.  from  year  to  year,  hardly  carries  the  same 
rights  as  an  estate  for  years,  but  usage 
varies  a  good  deal  in  the  different  states.  Generally 
the  rights,  so  far  as  not  specified,  would  be  inferred 
from  the  length  of  the  term.  A  long  term  would  imply 
the  tenant's  right  to  make  material  changes;  while  in  a 
short  term,  the  tenant  could  not  make  material  changes, 
and  would  not  be  apt  to,  tho  he  would  generally  have 
a  right  to  proper  use  of  wood,  and  to  gather  a  crop  that 
he  had  planted,  even  if  it  were  not  ripe  when  his  estate 
terminated;  tho  if  his  estate  were  for  a  single  year,  he 
would  not  be  apt  to  plant  one  that  would  mature  too 
late.  A  lessee  has  a  right  to  use  the  estate  as  his  own, 
unless  he  is  restricted  in  the  lease.  Otherwise  he  may 
use  woods  and  mines,  gather  crops,  remove  and  alter 
buildings,  and  construct  new  ones,  tho  of  course  if 
his  lease  is  very  short,  he  would  not  naturally  do  all 
these  things.  Yet  he  cannot  destroy  a  wood  entirely, 
but  may  use  only  what  fuel  or  timber  can  reasonably 
be  spared  from  it.  Nor  can  he  destroy  anything  else 
so  as  materially  to  lessen  the  value  of  the  property.  If 
he  did,  he  would  "commit  waste",  as  the  lawyers  call  it, 
which  would  subject  him  to  paying  damages,  and  might 
forfeit  his  lease. 

If  he  puts  up  a  new  building,  he  cannot  claim  its  value 
when  his  interest  terminates,  unless  by  agreement  with 
the  owner  of  the  fee — the  landlord, 
gg       He  airs  The  landlord  need  not  make  repairs  unless 

so  stipulated.  Otherwise  the  tenant  must 
make  enough  repairs  to  return  the  property  in  as 
good  condition  as  he  received  it,  "ordinary  wear  and 
tear  excepted". 

The  tenant  need  not  repair  after  a  fire  unless  he 
wants  to,  but  he  must  continue  to  pay  rent,  unless 
otherwise  agreed.  There  is  generally  a  special  agree- 
ment, however,  that  the  landlord  shall  repair  unless 
reconstruction  is  necessary,  in  which  case  the  lease  shall 
come  to  an  end. 

The  lessee  can  transfer  his  interest  to  another  tenant 


oo  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  89  b 

nn  .,,  c  L,  .^-      unless    the    contrary     is    stipulated,    tho 

89  b).  Subletting.    ^  .,,      ,  .  ,^         -^  i-    i  i  i 

he    still    himself    remains    liable    to    the 
landlord.  If  the  tenant  does  not  pass  on  the  money 

to  the  landlord,  the  landlord  can  eject  the  subtenant, 
but  if  the  subtenant  wishes,  he  can  guard  against  that 
by  paying  the  landlord  direct. 

89  (c).  Terminabii-  If  a  tenant  for  a  year  continues  on  into 
ity,  notice.  ^  sccoud  year  without  anything  being  said, 

he  can  continue  for  the  whole  of  it,  and  must  if  the 
landlord  wishes.  To  prevent  that,  notice  must  be  given, 
under  the  old  rule,  six  months  before  the  end  of  the 
year;  now,  generally  three  months,  tho  people  are  not 
very  particular  as  to  the  exact  day  or  week. 

An  estate  for  a  month  follows  the  same  general  rules 
as  an  estate  for  a  year. 

90.  Rights  under  The  rights  of  an  estate  for  years  belong 
life  estate.  q\^q  to  an  estate  for  life — either  for  the 
tenant's  life  or  for  the  life  of  another  person.  In  the 
latter  case,  if  the  tenant  die  before  the  other  person, 
the  other  person  would  not  enter  into  possession,  but 
the  tenant's  heirs,  or  anybody  appointed  in  his  will, 
would  enjoy  the  estate  during  the  life  on  which  it  was 
conditioned. 

In  addition  to  the  estates  already  mentioned,  there 
are  estates  terminable  at  the  pleasure  of  either  party — 

91.  Under  estates  called  estates  at  will,  which  carry  hardly 
^twlll.  any  privileges  but  occupancy.  There  are 
some  other  infrequent  estates  that  it  takes  something 
of  a  lawyer  to  understand. 

„„  .      ,  Besides  the  various  recognized  estates, 

92.  Appurtenances.    .,  .     •  •     ■^  .•  . 

^'^  there  are  certain  privileges  sometimes  at- 

taching to  land,  either  by  grant  or  prescription  (82^), 
and  going  with  it  when  it  is  transferred,  even  without 
being  named  more  specifically  than  under  the  general 
title  of  "appurtenances."  They  are  generally  in  the 
nature  of  rights  over  neighboring  land,  such  as  rights 
to  pass  or  carry  pipes  or  wires  over  it,  or  to  take  wood 
or  game  or  fish  from  it,  rights  of  way,  of  drawing  water, 
and  of  "antient  light" — light  not  to  be  obstructed  by 
building  (abolished  by  statute  in  New  York  and  some 


§  92  c]  Law  of  Real  Property.  81 

other  states) ;  and  among  appurtenances  are  also  gen- 
erally included  rights  to  use  party  walls,  and  rights 
over  adjoining  highways  and  waters.  These  rights 
generally  "go  with  the  land",  as  the  air  and  sunlight 
do,  tho  for  safety's  sake,  grants  should  generally  name 
the  land  and  its  appurtenances. 

Appurtenances   very   often    accrue   by   prescription, 
especially  rights  to  "antient  light",  rights  of  way,  and 
of  drawing  water. 
no,  1  o  .^      „        Party  w^alls  arc  very   frequent  in  cities 

^2  (a).  Party  walls,       ,  -'j,  .,  -^i  -i.i         r 

where  a  tew  mches  m  the  width  of  a 
room  may  be  valuable.  A  person  building  puts  half 
his  wall  on  the  land  of  an  adjoining  neighbor,  under 
agreement  that  the  neighbor  may  insert  his  beams  on 
the  wall  and  use  his  side  of  it.  Usually  a  price  is 
agreed  upon  for  this,  which  should  be  looked  up  in* 
searching  title,  as  the  conditions,  if  registered,  follow 
the  land,  whether  expressed  in  the  latest  deed  or  not. 
The  adjoining  owner  need  not  always  pay:  for  he 
may  be  so  uncertain  whether  he  will  want  a  wall  of 
just  the  character  proposed,  that  while  he  is  willing, 
on  the  chances,  to  have  the  wall  partly  on  his  land,  he 
will  take  no  farther  risk.  Yet,  for  the  sake  of  gaining 
space,  the  builder  may  be  very  glad  to  put  it  there 
without  any  compensation  for  its  use.  Neither  side 

can  tear  it  down  without  the  consent  of  the  other,  but 
either  can  add  in  any  way  that  does  not  damage  the 
other. 

Q2(b).  Land  beside  When  land  abuts  on  roads  in  built-up 
''°'^''^-  districts,  the  road   sometimes  belongs  to 

the  municipality,  but  in  rural  regions  generally,  the 
owner  on  each  side  owns  to  the  middle,  and  is  entitled 
to  anything  growing  on  his  side.  The  public  have  right 
of  passage  over  the  road,  but  only  so  long  as  they 
keep  it  in  passable  condition.  If  it  is  not  properly 
kept  up  as  a  road,  the  use  of  it  reverts  to  the  owners. 
^2  (c).  Land  by  Regarding  streams,  each  riparian  owner 

water.  owns  to  the  middle,  and  unless  the  stream 

is  navigable,  the  riparian  owner  has  the  sole  right  to 
fish  in  it  opposite  his  bank.          Regarding  an  owner 


82  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  92  c 

on  a  bay  miles  wide,  or  on  the  borders  of  the  sea,  the 
laws  of  different  states  vary  very  much.  In  Maine  and 
Massachusetts,  for  instance,  a  riparian  owner  on  tide- 
water holds  to  average  low-water  mark.  But  in  New 
York,  on  the  other  hand,  he  owns  only  to  the  ordi- 
nary high -water  mark;  the  state  owns  from  there  for 
three  miles  out — as  far  as  a  cannon  would  carry  at  the 
time  the  right  was  determined;  and  beyond  that,  the 
sea  is  everybody's. 

As  to  rights  to  bathe  from  the  shore  of  any  water,  and 
to  land  on  it,  nobody  has  a  right  on  another's  land; 
so  of  course  the  question  cannot  arise  at  all  where  the 
law  is  as  in  Maine  and  Massachusetts;  and  where  the 
law  is  as  in  New  York,  the  question  can  arise  only 
regarding  the  space  between  high  and  low  water,  which 
*  belongs  to  the  state.  The  state  often  grants  control 
to  the  riparian  owner.  Otherwise  the  rights  so  far  as 
fixed  at  all,  largely  rest  on  local  custom,  and  are  not 
yet  generally  clearly  determined  by  courts  or  legisla- 
tion. Ordinarily,  whoever  pleases  will  go  on  the  strip 
after  shell-fish,  tho  he  cannot  cross  another's  land  to 
do  it,  but  must  go  by  boat  from  some  place  where  he 
has  a  right  to  keep  a  boat. 

Wharves  for  shipping,  in  some  states,  are  generally 
owned  by  municipalities,  and  some  wharf  privileges 
are  sold  or  leased  to  private  parties  for  permanent  use, 
while  some  are  retained  for  the  general  benefit,  usually 
on  the  payment  of  fees.  In  other  states,  as  the  riparian 
owners  control  to  low -water  mark,  landing  and  wharf 
privileges  generally  spring  from  private  titles.  On  the 
great  lakes,  the  ' '  navigable  stream  "  mles  prevail,  not  the 
tide-water  rules,  the  riparian  owner  owning  to  the  middle, 
but  the  public  having  the  right  to  navigate  and  fish. 

The  casual  landings  of  people  boating  for  pleasure,  or 
merely  touching  to  land  a  passenger  or  a  package,  are 
not  generally  taken  account  of;  and  along  shores  and 
banks  generally,  if  the  privacy  of  owners  is  not  unrea- 
sonably disturbed,  they  are  not  apt  to  object  to  others' 
landing.  If  they  do  object,  the  rights  are  the  same  as  if 
the  trespasser  had  come  by  land. 


§  93]  ^^^'^'^  oj  Real  Property.  83 

Q-  p  , ,  ..  If  an  estate  is  granted  subject  to  con- 

ditions  or  restrictions  01  any  kind — such 
as  not  building  on  certain  portions,  or  not  carrying  on 
offensive  trades,  or  using  only  for  dwellings,  or  a  limited 
number  of  dwellings,  the  restrictions  follow  it  during 
the  whole  estate  originally  granted,  even  if  the  estate 
be  a  fee  simple;  and  the  records  should  be  searched 
for  such  restrictions,  just  as  for  mortgages,  judgments 
or  any  other  encumbrances.  Restrictions  can  lapse 
under  the  Statute  of  Limitations  (%2  k)  as  even  the* 
ownership  itself  can,  if  somebody  successfully  acts 
counter  to  it  for  twenty  years.  So,  if  somebody  acts 
counter  to  a  restriction,  for  twenty  years,  without  any- 
body attempting  to  enforce  the  restriction,  nobody  can 
enforce  it  thereafter.  There  are  exceptions,  but  we 
have  not  space  to  go  into  them:  of  all  products  of  the 
human  mind,  the  Law  is  the  most  immense  and  the 
most  complicated — so  complicated  that  there  is  probably 
no  rule  without  exceptions.  That  is  one  reason  why 
a  person  should  be  very  slow  to  act  in  a  serious  matter 
without  the  advice  of  a  good  lawyer. 

Now  that  we  have  some  notion  of  the  complexities 
of  interests  in  land,  it  is  natural  to  inquire  whether 
it  seems  inevitable  that  transfers  of  them  must  involve 
so  much  delay,  trouble,  expense  and  risk  of  bad  title; 
and  it  is  pleasant  to  know  that,  just  as  the  cumbrous 
forms  which  deeds  had  reached  have  been  remedied, 
so  remedies  have  been  found  for  the  other  cumbrous 
usages.  But  the  remedies  have  not  yet  been  universally 
adopted,  because  usages  which  have  been  evolved 
through  such  a  long  past,  have  their  roots  tangled  up 
in  so  many  things,  that  it  is  hard  to  eradicate  them  with- 
out wide  disturbance.  In  some  places,  some  proposed 
land  reforms  cannot  be  adopted  without  amending 
constitutions.  Moreover,  social  affairs  generally  are 
so  complicated  that  before  any  comprehensive  measure 
is  tried,  it  is  hard  to  tell  how  it  is  going  to  work.  There 
is  no  more  certain  mark  of  folh^  than  a  glib  cocksure 
plan  to  remedy  a  social  difficulty.  Wise  people  are  very 
slow  to  substitute  innovations  for  evolutions.     Yet  we 


84  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  93 

must  not  stick  in  the  mud  for  lack  of  trying  to  get  out. 
94.  TheTorrens  The  best  method  of  land  transfer  yet 
System.  suggested,  appears,  on  the  whole,  to  be 

what  is  known,  from  its  originator,  as  the  Torrens 
System.  It  was  first  used  in  Australia  in  1856,  then 
spread  into  the  neighboring  British  possessions,  into 
British  America,  and  into  Great  Britain  itself,  and  has 
lately  been  enacted  in  Illinois,  Ohio,  Massachusetts, 
^and  (for  some  counties)  Minnesota.* 

Its  principal  objects  are  to  save  the  delay  and  expense 
of  frequent  searches  of  titles,  and  the  losses  from  uncer- 
tain or  imperfect  titles.  This  is  effected  by  granting 
certificates  of  title  under  the  guarantee  of  the  state. 

Different  states  arrange  different  details,  but  the 
proceedings  are  something  like  this;  any  person  claim- 
ing an  estate  in  a  piece  of  land  (at  least  the  absolute 
ownership, — a  fee  simple:  the  minor  estates  are  not 
always  directly  provided  for,  but  are  indirectly),  can 
go  to  the  proper  authorities  (they  vary  in  different 
states),  asking  for  a  certificate  of  his  title.  The  officers 
search  the  records,  and  make  out  a  description  of  the 
title  as  it  then  appears,  stating  in  whom  the  fee  stands, 
and  in  whom  stand  any  claims,  such  as  dower,  mortgages, 
judgments,  estates  for  life  or  years,  etc.  Then  they 
issue  notice  by  advertisement  to  all  persons  claiming 
any  rights  in  the  estate,  and  by  mail  to  all  whose  addresses 
are  known,  calling  upon  them  to  present  statements  of 
their  rights  within  a  given  time.  At  the  end  of  that 
time,  they  judge  all  these  rights,  and  complete  their 
statement  of.  the  title  according  to  the  rights  which 
they  consider  established.  If  anybody  contests  any  of 
their  judgments,  the  case  is  given  to  a  court,  from  whose 
decision  lies  a  right  of  appeal  to  a  higher  court,  whose 
decree  is  final ;  and  then  a  certificate  of  title  embracing 
all  the  rights  is  recorded.  The  certificate  may  state  that 
an  unencumbered  fee  simple  rests  in  one  individual;  or 
the  certificate  may  vary  so  far  as  to  indicate  a  fee  vesting 

*  The  first  enactments  in  Illinois  and  Ohio  did  not  fit  the 
constitutions  of  those  states.  In  Illinois  a  second  enactment 
has  been  made  which  promises  success. 


[§  94  ^(^"^  ^f  ^^^'Cil  Property.  85 

in  several  persons,  and  a  variety  of  rights  vesting  in 
several  other  persons.  But  such  as  it  is,  the  certificate 
states  the  authoritative  title  of  the  property,  which 
can  never  again  be  questioned.  Duplicates  of  the  cer- 
tificate are  given  to  persons  having  rights  in  the  property. 

The  chief  advantages  of  these  certificates  are  that 
while  under  previous  usage,  if  anybody  wants  to  sell 
any  rights  he  may  have  in  a  piece  of  real  estate,  or 
pledge  them  for  a  loan,  the  title  has  to  be  searched,  at 
an  expense  of  money  which  may  be  greater  than  a  loan 
will  justify,  and  at  an  expense  of  time  which  may  lead 
to  his  bankruptcy  before  the  value  of  his  rights  can  be 
ascertained;  but  with  the  modern  certificate,  he  can 
show  his  rights  at  a  glance,  and  an  expert  can  appraise 
their  value  very  quickly.  Moreover  they  are  guaranteed 
by  the  state,  and  therefore  not  open  to  any  question,  as 
rights  in  real  estate  under  the  usual  registry  system 
always  are. 

If  the  officers  make  some  mistake  which  does  injustice, 
the  Massachusetts  plan  is  that  the  title,  as  certified, 
cannot  be  questioned  (except,  of  course,  for  fraud), 
but  if  anybody  can  prove  himself  wronged  without  any 
fault  or  carelessness  of  his  own,  he  is  made  good  through 
an  insurance  fund  which  is  accumulated  from  a  trifling 
percentage  (one-tenth  of  one  per  cent.)  of  the  value  of 
each  piece  of  property  certified,  which  is  paid  when 
the  certificate  is  granted,  and  also  whenever  the  prop- 
erty passes  by  descent  or  will. 

The  expenses  of  searching  title  and  preparing  the 
certificates  do  not  come  out  of  the  general  taxes:  so 
people  who  own  no  land  do  not  have  to  pay  them  for 
the  benefit  of  those  who  do;  charges  are  made  for 
preparing  the  certificates,  but  they  are  generally  no  more 
than  that  of  an  ordinary  search  of  title,  and  they  are  paid 
once  for  all;  while  under  the  old  system,  as  much  gener- 
ally has  to  be  paid  every  time  a  piece  of  property  is  sold 
or  mortgaged — sometimes  a  dozen  times  a  year. 

In  Massachusetts,  the  holder  of  any  certificate  whose 

-  interest  is  less  than  the  fee,  is  prevented  from  raising 

money  fraudulently,  by  having  a  mortgagee's  duplicate 


86  The  Protection  of  Riglvts.  [§  94 

so  stamped;  and  when  the  mortgage  is  paid,  it  is  given 
up  and  stamped  "canceled".  A  similar  arrangement 
can  be  made,  of  course,  when  certificates  are  issued  to 
holders  of  other  interests,  tho  there  are  not  always 
provisions  for  such  issue. 

But  as  a  title  good  to-day  may  not  be  good  to-mor- 
row, sales  and  encumbrances  coming  after  the  certificate 
is  issued  are  effected  by  just  the  same  documents  as 
before,  only  the  first  'principle,  of  course,  is  that  no 
change  in  the  rights  to  the  land  takes  effect  before  it 
is  recorded  in  the  certificate  and  its  duplicates.  Where 
ownership  of  the  fee  is  changed,  a  new  certificate  is 
issued,  and  the  old  one  stamped  "canceled".  To  use 
an  imperfect  certificate  with  intent  to  defraud,  is  made 
subject  to  heavy  penalties,  and  anybody  purposing  to 
accept  a  certificate  can  compare  it  with  the  original  at 
the  recorder's  office  in  a  few  minutes,  for  a  trifling  fee, 
instead  of  waiting  a  month  to  get  the  title  searched, 
and  incurring  heavy  expenses. 

Titles  by  prescription  (82  k)  cannot  be  obtained  under 
the  Torrens  system  (in  Massachusetts,  at  least)  against 
a  title  that  has  been  certified  under  this  system,  which 
seems,  on  the  whole,  a  just  provision,  tho  it  may  well 
be  questioned. 

In  states  adopting  the  new  system,  getting  a  register  of 
property  under  it,  is  made  voluntary,  and  interested 
persons  generally  apply  for  certificates  only  when  they 
sell  or  mortgage,  or  grant  estates  for  years.  Thus 
the  labor  is  spread  over  time  enough  to  make  it  quite 
practicable. 

If  mortgages,  leases,  etc.,  should  make  the  certificate 
of  an  active  piece  of  property,  unwieldy,  there  seems 
nothing  to  prevent  the  owner  applying  for  a  new  cer- 
tificate with  all  the  dead  changes  left  out,  and  simply 
showing  in  whom  the  rights  vest  at  date. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


PERSONAL    PROPERTY. 

Evolution  of  Rights  in  It. 

Having  traced  the  evolution,  protection  and  transfer 
of  rights  to  Property  in  Land,  we  come  to  treat  in 
detail  of  the  similar  features  of  the  Personal  Property 
developed  out  of  the  land.  In  our  first  summary  (51, 
51a)  we  found  the  agencies  that  develop  personal  prop- 
erty to  be  Land,  Labor  and  Ability. 

Labor  generally  means  effort  of  any  unattractive 
kind,  but  here  I  mean  the  work  of, a  man's  body. 

When  we  were  speaking  of  the  monkey  picking  the 
fruit,  we  called  the  third  factor  "intelligence",  but 
"intelligence"  is  not  broad  enough  to  cover  the  ground: 
judgment,  knowledge,  forethought  patience,  honesty 
and  a  host  of  other  qualities  are  needed  now,  and  we 
sum  them  up  under  the  name  of  Ability. 

The  differences  in  men  are  so  marked,  then,  as  to 
divide  them  into  two  classes — men  without  much  ability, 
who  perform  the  manual  labor,  and  men  with  great 
ability,  who  tell  the  others  what  labor  to  perform. 
Under  such  a  classification,  as  under  others  in  all  sciences, 
the  divisions  overlap  somewhat,  but  they  will  do  very 
well  for  our  purpose,  if  we  bear  in  mind  two  of  the 
particulars  in  which  the  classification  falls  short. 
95,  Product  varies  The  first  is  that  many  laboring  men,  tho 
with  ability,  guided  more  or  less  by  the  ability  of  other 

87 


88  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§95 

men,  have  ability  of  their  own.  Tho  a  common  laborer 
has  usually  but  little  ability,  and  shows  it  by  getting 
only  a  dollar  a  day,  an  average  mechanic  has  much 
more  ability,  and  shows  it  by  getting  two  or  three  dol- 
lars a  day ;  while  a  small  number  of  mechanics  of  con- 
siderable ability,  get  as  high  as  even  ten  or  twenty 
dollars  a  day. 

As  Mr.  John  A.  Hill  said  in  his  notable  circular  to 
his  men  (reprinted  in  The  World's  Work  for  February, 
1906)  during  the  printing  strike:  "Those  of  you  who 
know  me,  know  that  I  am  inclined  to  pay  more  than 
the  scale  to  good  men,  or  grant  them  other  privileges 
that  amount  to  the  same  thing." 

An  illustration  of  what  labor  guided  by  its  own 
ability,  can  do,  was  afforded  in  the  truckmen's  strike 
in  New  Haven  in  1903,  when  some  thirty  Yale  stu- 
dents took  the  places  of  the  strikers,  as  a  lark.  They 
were  found,  despite  their  inexperience,  to  do  more 
loading  and  unloading  than  twice  as  many  truckmen. 
But  men  of  such  ability  do  not  remain  truckmen,  but 
are  soon  guiding  the  labors  of  other  men. 

In  successful  businesses,  the  workmen  are  nearly 
always  under  the  guidance  of  men  of  vastly  greater 
ability,  who  get  many  times  as  much  as  the  workmen. 

The  second  qualification  to  bear  in  mind  if  we  treat 
the  industrial  world  as  divided  into  men  of  labor  and 
men  of  ability,  is  that,  in  England  at  least,  the  laborers 
are  fast  learning  to  be  their  own  guides.  Cooperative 
industries  carried  on  by  the  workers  themselves,  made 
wonderful  progress  during  the  latter  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

The  rewards  of  ability  vary  much  more  than  those 
of  manual  labor.  When  you  yet  up  into  the  ability 
that  can  guide  the  labor  of  others,  men  vary  much 
more  than  they  do  when  the  ability  is  only  enough  to 
guide  one's  own  labor;  and  in  the  long  run,  the  re- 
wards vary  sornewhat  with  relation  to  the  ability,  tho 
the  men  of  the  very  greatest  inventive  ability,  like  the 
creators  of  the  steam-engine,  the  telegraph,  the  power 
loom,  the  cotton-gin,  the  reaping-machine,  and  other 


§  95  <^]  Personal  Property.  89 

great  inventions,  who  influence  the  labor  of  nations 
and  generations,  never  reap  a  tithe  of  their  own  pro- 
duction; while  on  the  other  hand  men  of  administra- 
tive ability,  like  Stewart  and  Vanderbilt,  whose  work 
is  mainly  in  handling  other  men,  and  whose  work  lives 
but  little  longer  than  they  do  (except  in  their  families' 
fortunes)  reap  a  much  larger  proportion  of  their  pro- 
duction. 

Practically,  a  man's  ability  is  determined  by  the 
value  of  what  he  produces;  and  in  the  long  run,  despite 
the  poor  pay  of  some  of  the  inventors,  most  men  are 
paid  accordingly. 

^b  (a),  even  the  A  striking  proof  of  how  wagcs  vary 
product  of  the        with  ability,  is  given  in  Brassey's  "Work 

lowest  Laborers.  ■,  -t-tt  ,,       y-r  ,,      ,  •■       r  i 

and  Wages  .  He  says  that  he  found  wages 
the  world  over  regulated  by  the  amount  of  ability;  he 
got  the  same  labor  for  the  same  amount  of  money  in 
one  part  of  the  world  as  in  another.  If  he  paid  ten 
cents  a  day  in  India,  it  took  ten  men  to  accomplish 
the  results  that  it  took  one  to  accomplish  in  countries 
where  he  paid  a  dollar  a  day.  In  May,  1905,  the 
manager  of  the  Corbin  estate  in  Greenville,  Miss., 
reported  that  in  cotton  he  could  make  $5  with  Italian 
labor  where  he  could  make  $1  with  negro. 

The  difference  did  not  lie  in  muscular  strength.  Even 
in  mere  picking  or  shoveling,  a  man  of  ability  will  accom- 
plish more  than  a  man  of  much  less  ability  and  more 
strength:  it  is  more  a  matter  of  ability  than  of 
strength — of  intelligence  in  work,  including  energy  and 
faithfulness,  which  are  considerable  elements  of  ability. 

We  shall  find,  as  we  go  on,  that  false  reasoning, 
especially  regarding  convict  labor  and  protective  tariff's, 
is  often  based  on  a  false  assumption  that  a  day's  work 
is  the  same  thing  from  one  wage-earner  as  from  another, 
in  one  country  as  in  another,  and  at  one  price  as  at 
another:  so  we  may  as  well  consider  some  more  illus- 
trations of  the  utter  falsity  of  any  such  ideas.  In 
Canada,  Brassey  found  English  labor  at  5s.  6d.  cheaper 
than  Irish  at  3s.  6d.;  in  England,  3s.  6d.  cheaper  than 
IS.  6d.  in  Ireland,  or  than  5d.  in  India.      In  a  stone- 


90  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  95  ^ 

quarry  in  France,  he  paid  Englishmen  6  francs  a  day, 
Irishmen  4,  and  Frenchmen  3,  and  found  the  EngHsh- 
men  the  cheapest  of  the  lot.  General  Walker  *  says 
that  the  English  cotton-spinner  is  paid  twelve  times  as 
much  as  the  East-Indian,  and  yet  undersells  him  in 
his  own  market;  that  an  English  weaver  tends  two 
or  three  times  as  many  looms  as  a  Russian,  and  that 
the  English  looms  run-  faster.  Brassey  says  that  three 
English  railway  navvies  do  the  work  of  five  French 
ones.  It  is  universally  known  that  American  laborers 
surpass  those  of  the  rest  of  the  world  in  efficiency — 
strength,  intelligence,  and  saving,  as  much  as  they 
do  in  pay.  In  France  it  takes  forty-two  men  to  do 
the  work  at  an  iron-furnace,  that  in  England  is  done 
by  twenty-five.  English  farmers  on  the  shores  of  the 
Hellespont  prefer  to  give  Greeks  ;^io  a  year  rather 
than  give  Turks  ;;^3 .  Women  in  English  cotton-factories 
get  about  13s.  a  week,  while  French,  German  and 
Belgian  women  get  about  8,  and  Russians  about  2^; 
and  the  English  labor  is  the  cheapest.  In  different 
parts  of  England  itself,  agricultural  wages  varied  from 
9s.  per  week  to  i6s.,  and  the  i6s.  laborers  were  the 
cheapest.  Mr.  Atkinson  says  ("Facts  and  Figures"): 
"With  one  dollar's  worth  of  labor  .  .  .  here  with 
labor-saving  machinery,  we  can  buy  the  day's  hand- 
work ...   of  Russia,  Italy  and  Asia." 

In  view  of  such  startling  facts,  no  wonder  that 
there  is  a  constant  conflict  between  Labor  and  Ability, 

*  Political  Economy,  Advanced  Course.  General  Walker's 
"The  Wages  Question",  Chapter  III,  should  be  read  on  this 
and  collateral  topics. 

General  Walker  farther  quotes  various  authorities  to  the 
following  effect:  an  EngHsh  wood-sawyer  will  do  the  work 
of  thirty-two  East-Indian  ones.  He  gets  but  about  eight 
times  the  pay.  An  English  laborer  does  and  receives  about 
twice  as  much  as  an  Irish  one.  Tho  provisions  are  cheaper 
in  Russia  than  in  England,  it  costs  six  to  eight  times  as  much 
to  mow  an  acre  of  hay  in  Russia  as  in  England.  It  takes 
twice  as  many  harfds  to  do  most  kinds  of  factory  work  in 
France  and  Germany  as  in  England.  In  Belgium  a  hand  prints 
from  one  hundred  and  sixteen  to  three  hundred  pieces  of  cloth 
a  day,  in  England  the  average  is  one  thousand. 


§  97  '-^]  Personal  Property.  91 

r.r.  r^m   ,.    r      especiallv  as   many   even   claim  that  the 

96.  Difficulty  of  ^  1,       j      j.i,      u       j  1  1 

adjusting  Rights      men  who  do  the  hand-work  make  every- 

between  Ability        thing  and  ought  to  have  everything.     Let 

and  Labor.  &  °  ^-1,^1, 

US,  then,  try  to  ascertain  how  the  respec- 
tive property  rights  of  Labor  and  AbiHty  are 
evolved.  It  is  plain  enough  how  Labor  increases  pro- 
duction, but  outside  of  the  ability  of  the  individual 
laborer,  it  is  not  so  plain  where  Ability  first  begins  to 
increase  it.  That  most  important  step  takes  place 
wherever  one  man  wisely  tells  another  what  to  do.  A 
97  General  common  laborer  cannot  dig  a  ditch  straight 

Functions  of  without   a   person   of   superior   ability   to 

^  ^*^  show  him  how;  or  he  can't  go  into  a  wood 

and  chop  down  the  trees  that  ought  to  be  taken,  with- 
out somebody  of  superior  ability  to  mark  them  for 
him — he  cannot  even  remember  them  unless  they  are 
marked,  but  will  chop  down  the  wrong  ones.* 

Such  a  laborer  is  but  the  primitive  man, 
izefmanfot'es  '  tlio  evolved  up  to  a  Certain  disadvan- 
^nde"endence         tagc.     The  savage  man  is  generally  able 

to  get  his  food  from  hunting  and  fish- 
ing, and  to  make  his  simple  clothes  and  shelter.  But 
the  so-called  civilized  man,  especially  in  villages  and 
cities,  has  not  generally  the  woods  and  streams  to  resort 
to,  and  is  not  accustomed,  like  the  savages,  to  make 
his  own  raiment  and  dwelling.  Therefore,  as  a  rule, 
the  moderately  evolved  man,  unless  a  higher  evolved 
man  initiates  an  enterprise  and  gives  him  a  chance 
to  take  part  in  it,  cannot  get  his  own  food,  clothing 
and  shelter,  and  is  unable  to  find  anything  to  do. 
The  man  of  only  average  ability,  if  he  is  out  of  a  job, 
does  not  get  another,  before  the  man  of  more  than 
average  ability  offers  him  one.  Until  then  he  is  apt  to 
sit  down  and  fold  his  hands,  and  complain  that  he  has 
not  tools  and  material,  and  could  not  find  a  customer 

*  The  author  once  took  an  excellent  woodchopper  into 
some  pleasure-grounds  and  pointed  out  a  dead  tree  to  be  cut 
down.  Near  it  stood  a  beautiful  live  one.  After  the  employer's 
back  was  turned,  the  chopper  cut  the  live  one  and  left  the  dead 
one  standing. 


92  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  97  ^ 

if  he  had,  etc.,  etc.  And  for  all  this,  he  blames  the  rest 
of  mankind:  not  himself  and  his  maker.  But  another 
type  of  man,  tho  vastly  rarer,  goes  and  puts  in  the 
first  load  of  coal  he  finds  lying  on  the  sidewalk,  or 
shovels  off  the  first  bit  of  snow  he  finds  unremoved,  or 
in  summer  mows  the  first  lawn  that  needs  it,  or  takes 
some  other  of  the  thousand  jobs  lying  around  for  some- 
body to  do.  This  man,  however,  is  soon  an  enterpriser, 
while  the  other  man  is  always  a  wage-earner,  and 
blames  the  enterpriser  for  it.  It  would  be  well  if 
everybody  should  read  Sill's  little  poem  "Opportunity" 
and  Bunner's  little  story  "Zadoc  Pine".  Both  are 
admirable  and  enjoyable  as  pieces  of  literature,  and  as 
instructive  as  they  are  delightful. 

97(b)  Thinas  Any   material   thing   made   by   man   is 

made'to embody      simply  the  embodiment  of  an  idea.     The 
""^  ^^'  value  of  the  thing  depends  mainly  on  the 

value  of  the  idea;  and  as  industries  have  advanced,  the 
ideas  have  more  and  more  been  contributed  by  excep- 
tional men,  and  embodied  by  ordinary  men. 

There  is  hardly  a  thing  made  for  wages,  from  pins  to 
palaces,  that  is  not  simply  a  putting  into  form,  by 
many  men,  of  ideas  furnished  by  a  few.  Everything 
turned  out  in  the  factory  is  of  a  shape  and  size  that 
somebody  else  tells  the  laborers  to  make.  The  laborers 
on  every  railroad  are  simply  building  a  line  laid  out, 
in  direction,  grades,  width,  material,  by  somebody  else; 
building  stations  located  and  designed  by  somebody 
else;  making  locomotives  and  cars  designed  by  some- 
body else  with  wonderful  ingenuities  and  conveniences 
invented  by  somebody  else;  and  when  the  road  is 
finished,  running  trains  at  hours  and  rates  of  speed 
devised  by  somebody  else. 

Take  away  the  few  men  of  ability,  and  none  of  these 
things    covdd   exist;     take   away   an   equal   number   of 
laborers,  and  the  things  would  exist  all  the  same. 
97  cc;.  Averages  Now    ability   is    rare.     There   is    a    law 

and  Ability,  gf  nature,  first  brought  prominently  for- 

ward in  regard  to  human  relations  by  Galton,  that  of 
a  given  number  of  things  of  the  same  kind,  the  most 


§  97  ^]  Personal  Property.  93 

will  cluster  around  the  average,  and  become  rarer  as 
they  depart  from  the  average.  So  it  is  with  men: 
of  a  hundred,  probably  eighty  will  have  ability  enough 
to  produce  only  the  equivalent  of  the  minimum  wages 
— for  comparison's  sake,  say  a  dollar  a  day;  ten  out 
of  the  hundred  can  produce,  say,  two  dollars;  four, 
four  dollars;  three,  ten  dollars;  two,  twenty  dollars; 
and  possibly  one,  fifty  dollars.  If  you  want  to  find  a 
hundred-dollar-a-day  man,  you  will  probably  have  to 
look  into  a  group  of  a  thousand  men;  to  find  a  Van-- 
derbilt,  you  will  need  a  generation;  for  a  Watt  or  an 
Edison,  a  century;  for  a  Euclid  or  a  Newton,  ten  or 
twenty  centuries;  and  for  an  Aristotle  or  a  Spencer, 
half  of  human  experience. 

Galton  represents  the  facts  graphically  by  a  target 
where  the  shots  are  naturally  thickest  at  the  center,  and 
scattering  toward  the  edges.  For  our  purpose,  the 
representation  would  be  better  by  a  horizontal  band 
of  dots,  with  the  dots  thickest  along  the  space  represent- 
ing the  average,  half  way  from  the  top  to  the  bottom 
of  the  band,  and  growing  thinner  toward  the  upper 
and  lower  edges.  Then  a  few  should  be  scattered  above, 
to  indicate  men  of  special  ability;  and  a  few  below,  to 
indicate  men  of  special  stupidity. 

97  w.  The  tower  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^  bclow  the  average  of 
depends  on  the  ability  have  done  their  best  only  under 
"^  '^'''  the  guidance  of  the  men  above  it.     The 

workmen  have  needed  their  foremen,  the  foremen  have 
needed  their  employers,  the  employers  have  needed 
the  Watts  and  Edisons,  the  Watts  and  Edisons  have 
needed  the  Euclids  and  Newtons,  and  the  Euclids  and 
Newtons  have,  unconsciously  perhaps,  needed  the  whole 
environment  of  thought  shaped  by  an  Aristotle  or  (to 
shift  the  matter  more  toward  the  future)  by  a  Spencer. 

And  it  is  not  well  to  forget,  as  an  essential  of  even 
material  well-being,  the  moral  atmosphere  created  by 
a  Gautama,  or  a  Christ. 

But  to  come  back  to  our  daily  experience. 
97  re;.  "Finds  In  the  higher  walks  of  industry,  the  man 

"""'''•"  of  ability  finds  the  work  for  other  men  to 


94  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§97^ 

do:  they  go  to  him  for  work,  and  unless  he  "gives  work", 
they  remain  among  "the  unemployed". 
97  (f).  Increases         He  increases  product  by  organizing  men 
product.  q£  comparatively  little  ability  so  that  they 

can  produce  what  is  wanted,  and  produce  more  of  it, 
carry  more  and  exchange  more  than  they  could  if  left 
to  themselves.  He  decides  what  enterprises  will  pay, 
undertakes  them,  gets  together  the  capital  for  them, 
and  often  invents  machinery  and  industrial  processes. 
97  (g).  Saues  He  effects  economies,  often,  if  he  is  a 

waste.  man  of  sufficient,  ability,  by  abandoning 

enterprises  before  they  run  at  a  loss.  Moreover,  as 
Labor,  unless  guided  by  Ability,  either  on  the  laborer's 
own  part  or  that  of  his  manager,  is  simply  the  mere 
physical  effort  of  the  animal  or  the  savage,  it  is  apt  to 
be  wasteful,  and  often  destroys  more  than  it  produces. 
In  most  cases,  unless  the  superintendent  of  the  laborers 
has  enough  ability  to  set  them  making  the  proper 
things  the  proper  way,  they  produce  less  than  nothing, 
by  spoiling  material  and  producing  articles  that  will 
not  sell  for  what  they  cost.  The  "bargain-stores"  con- 
tain many  things  not  worth  as  much  as  the  materials 
and  wear  of  tools  (not  to  count  the  labor)  that  it  took  to 
make  them.  On  the  other  hand.  Labor  guided  by  Abil- 
ity makes  nearly  everything  it  touches  worth  more  than 
it  was  before. 

The  man  of  ability,  however,  generally  does  more  than 
conduct  the  processes ;  he  generally  organizes  the  enter- 
prise from  the  beginning.  Because  he  undertakes  the  en- 
terprise, he  has  sometimes  been  called  the  undertaker, 
and  some  people  who  do  not  like  that  word  have  taken 
a  French  equivalent,  entrepreneur ,  but  English  is  good 
enough  for  us,  and  we  will  henceforth  call  him  the  enter- 
priser, as  probably  has  been  done  more  than  once  already. 
98.  Detailed  Func-  ^^  already  intimated,  the  enterpriser 
tions  of  Ability.  j-^^s  first  to  decide  what  enterprise  will  pay; 
and  that  is  the  most  difficult  task  of  all.  A  market  may 
reach  to  the  remotest  corners  of  the  world,  or  may  be 
restricted  to  a  fastidious  class  in  a  few  great  cities,  or 
may  depend  on  unaccountable  shifts  of  fashion,  or  on  a 


§99]  Personal  Property.  95 

million  mysterious  causes :  yet  the  enterpriser  must  know 
98 fa;.  Prophesy-  what  the  market  wants,  and  how  much. 
ing  wants.  jsjq    other    man,    perhaps,    so    needs    the 

genius  of  the  prophet.     It  is  no  wonder  that  only  one 
man  in  thousands  has  it  to  any  marked  degree. 
98  w.  Raising  After  the  prophet  has  determined  what 

capital.  j^Q  (Jq^  unless  he  has  enough  money  of  his 

own  (which  is  seldom  the  case,  in  the  industries  so  big  as 
to  supply  us  most  cheaply)  he  must  get  other  people  to 
put  in  their  money.  The  capacity  to  find  them  and  to 
make  them  trust  him,  is  one  great  and  rare  element  of 
Ability. 

98  re;.  At  the  Next,  if  he  wants  a  factory,  he  has  to 

"""'''*•  decide  on  the  building  and  machinery  that 

will  pay,  and  see  them  well  and  economically  constructed ; 
to  buy  the  material  in  the  best  market  and  at  the  most 
favorable  time,  sometimes  gettmg  credit  if  he  thinks 
it  wise  to  buy  more  than  he  has  money  to  pay  for  at 
the  time;  to  get  together  the  men,  using  great  judgment 
of  human  nature  in  getting  honest  and  capable  foremen 
and  accountants;  to  see  that  the  men  are  properly 
organized,  as  already  explained  (and  he  has,  by  the 
way,  to  keep  this  in  mind  in  getting  up  his  factory 
and  machinery) ;  then  he  has  to  manage  the  men  and 
their  strikes  and  labor-union  troubles. 
98  w.  Outside  of  Outside  of  his  works,  he  must  determine 
the  woriis.  from  day  to  day  just  what  styles  of  his 

product  are  apt  to  strike  the  coming  tastes  and  fashions, 
and  when  and  of  what  kinds  to  make  big  lots  and 
small  ones;  to  make  his  product  known  by  wise  and 
economical  advertising;  to  find  the  best  market  for  it, 
both  in  time  and  place;  to  know  whom  to  trust  and 
whom  to  press  for  money,  and  how  to  keep  his  trade; 
and  then  he  has  to  collect  the  money.  All  this  time 
he  has  to  see  to  his  accounts  and  taxes,  and  if  he  can, 
occasionally  get  a  little  time  to  eat  and  sleep  and 
recreate  himself. 

Such  is  the  view  generally  entertained  by 

of'the°lnferpriser.    competent  people,  of  what  the  enterpriser 

has  to  do.     The  view  generally  entertained 


96  TJie  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  99 

by  other  people,  however,  is  that,  as  he  seldom  soils  his 
hands,  or  uses  any  tool  but  a  pen,  he  has  nothing  to  do, 
but  is  a  mere  drone  living  on  money  that  really  belongs 
to  the  people  who  do  the  hand-work.  Because  the 
captain  of  industry  does  not  actually  use  a  tool,  any  more 
than  a  military  leader  actually  uses  a  weapon,  most  of 
the  people  who  cheered  Dewey  on  his  return  from 
Manila  are  ready  to  say  that  a  captain  of  industry  is 
entitled  to  none  of  the  results,  because  the  work  is  all 
done  by  his  men.  The  truth  is  that  they  would  have 
been  as  powerless  without  him,  as  a  fleet  without  its 
Dewey,  or  an  army  without  its  Grant. 
100.  Division  of  The  most  noticeable  process  by  which  the 
labor.  enterpriser  increases    and    cheapens    pro- 

duction is  by  the  effective  division  of  labor.  In  mak- 
ing almost  anything,  there  are  a  good  many  processes. 
If  one  man  performs  them  all,  he  will  not  be  as  skilful 
in  any  one  of  them — as  able  to  do  that  one  nearly  as 
often  in  an  hour,  or  as  well,  as  if  he  practises  that  one 
alone.  Besides,  if  he  efifects  a  dozen,  he  will  lose  time 
in  changing  from  one  to  another.  Hence  it  is  a  great 
aid  to  production,  to  have  a  factory  big  enough  to 
have   separate  men  for  separate  processes.  But   if 

there  are  a  dozen  processes,  that  does  not  necessarily 
mean  a  dozen  men:  some  processes  would  take  more 
time  than  others,  so  the  man  doing  the  cjuick  ones 
would  need  more  men  doing  the  others,  to  keep  up 
with  him;  or  possibly  in  a  small  factory  it  would  be 
cheaper  to  have  some  man  do  more  than  one  process: 
that  would  of  course  depend  upon  the  size  of  the  fac- 
tory, and  it  would  also  depend  on  the  ability  of  the 
manager:  unless  he  decided  wisely  how  to  portion  out 
the  work,  he  would  have  too  many  men  for  one  process, 
and  too  few  for  another,  and  so  throw  everybody's 
work  out  of  gear.  If  the  men  decide  this  themselves, 
each  man  would  want  to  do  what  he  liked  best,  and 
he  could  not  know  as  much  about  the  other  men's  work, 
and  what  the  material  and  the  total  result  aimed  at 
would  require,  as  a  man  whose  business  it  should  be, 
while  doing   nothing   special   himself,  to  watch  it  all, 


§  I02  Personal  Property.  97 

and  make  all  work  together.  Even  where  workmen 
have  owned  an  establishment  together,  they  have  had 
to  make  a  leader  and  obey  him,  and  generally  to  pay 
him  more  than  any  of  the  workmen  got  (118).     When 

,.,  P  it  comes  to  watching  it  all,  there  are  few 

101.  Few  men  can  .1.1  ^11  -i-^  -r    ^1 

conduct  large  men  that  have  the  ability,  even  11  they 
enterprises.  could    have   the    Opportunity:    most  men 

who  try  management  make  a  botch  of  it  (120).  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  of  the  men  who  try  to  perform  the  duties 
of  the  enterpriser,  the  vast  majority  fail.* 

The  general  reason  that  very  few  men  are  fit  to 
conduct  a  large  business,  while  so  many  men  con- 
duct small  ones,  seems  to  be  that  for  a  large  business, 
the  preparations  have  to  be  made  for  months — some- 
times years,  ahead.  The  little  businesses  that  buy 
from  the  large  ones,  can  buy  from  one  day  to  the  next, 
and  need  only  take  from  day  to  day,  or  even  from 
hour  to  hour,  what  they  see  that  people  want.  More- 
over, as  a  large  business  cannot  have  the  enterpriser's 
eye  everywhere  at  once,  he  must  leave  much  of  the 
supervision  to  lieutenants  who  themselves  have  ability; 
and  the  capacity  to  search  out  and  select  good  lieuten- 
ants is  rare,  especially  in  combination  with  the  other 
rare  powers  that  an  enterpriser  needs. 

,„„  ,,  ...^      ^  What  has  been  said  in  regard  to  organiz- 

102,  Ability  out-        .         .      ,       .  1       ■       ,  ■^  i  f 

side  of  tangible  mg  factories — proaiicmg,  tangible  goods,  ap- 
production.  plies  equally  to  organizing  stores  and  rail- 

roads and  steamships  and  hotels  and  all  othfer  forms  of 
industry.  It  used  to  be  a  jocose  way  of  describing  a 
man  of  little  ability,  to  say:  "He  can't  keep  a  hotel." 
Unless  there  were  men  who  could  organize  something 
bigger  than  a  stage-coach,  we  should  have  to  go  in 

*  Mr.  Joseph  H.  Walker  of  Worcester,  Mass.,  lately  found 
on  investigation  that  of  every  hundred  men  in  business  in  that 
place  in  1845,  sixty-seven  were  out  in  i860.  Out  of  seventy- 
five  manufacturers" in  1850,  only  thirty  left  business  with  any 
property,  and  only  six  of  the  sons  of  the  seventy-five  had  any 
property.  In  i860  there  were  one  hundred  and  seven  manu- 
facturers, and  only  sixty  left  business  with  property.  There 
had  not  been  time  for  many  deaths:  so  failures  are  the  only 
explanation.     (Wells,  "Recent  Economic  Changes.") 


98  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  102 

stage-coaches;  unless  there  were  men  who  could  or- 
ganize something  bigger  than  a  sloop,  we  should  have 
to  go  in  sloops;  unless  there  were  men  who  could  or- 
ganize the  big  shops,  we  should  have  to  run  all  over 
the  cities  to  get  what  we  want  from  a  variety  of  little 
ones,  and  then  should  not  have  as  wide  an  assortment 
to  choose  from,  or  be  able  to  get  what  we  could  find, 
at  as  low  a  price. 
,no  <iTu  r    i         In    stores    and    railroads,    etc.,    where 

103.     The  Great         ,  ,  ,       ^    .' .  V    i    i 

Industr""  cheap-  there  cannot  be  much  division  or  labor, 
ens  product,  ^^^  cheapening  is  effected  by  making  the 

industries  large:  in  most  industries,  the  more  you  do 
of  a  thing,  the  cheaper  you  can  do  it.  A  bookkeeper 
can  make  a  figure  9  as  cheaply  as  he  can  make  a 
figure  I ;  a  wheelbarrow  can  carry  a  bushel  of  potatoes 
as  cheaply  as  it  can  carry  one;  a  locomotive  can  take 
a  dozen  cars  in  a  train  as  cheaply  as  one;  a  man  of 
ability  can  turn  out  or  handle  a  thousand  pieces  of 
goods  easier  than  a  man  of  no  ability  can  turn  out  or 
handle  one.  Stewart,  the  first  great  shopkeeper  in 
New  York,  as  compared  with  all  previous  shopkeepers, 
is  said  to  have  saved  the  people  who  shopped  with 
him  ten  per  cent.  Commodore  Vanderbilt,  by  cheapen- 
ing freights  from  the  grain-raising  and  flour-milling 
regions  of  the  West,  is  estimated  to  have  saved  every 
man  on  the  seaboard  a  dollar  on  each  barrel  of  flour 
that  he  bought. 
,n,  c  i     ■    ',         The    fortunes    of    men    of    ability    are 

income  not  at  ex-  usually  Only  a  small  portion  of  what  they 
pense  of  Labor.  ^^^^^^  ^^^  ^^^^^  f^^  ^^j^g^.  p^opig^      Jf  ^i{q 

inventor  of  the  steam-engine  were  alive  and  could  have 
half  that  he  has  saved  for  and  bestowed  on  other  people, 
probably  no  one  country  in  the  world  would  be  rich 
enough  to  pay  what  all  countries  together  owe  him. 
105.  Invention  and  Lst  US  look  into  this  matter  of  inven- 
Evoiution.  tions  a  little  more  closely:   we  shall  have 

to  refer  to  it  more  than  once.  What  do  we  really  mean 
by  "the  inventor  of  the  steam-engine"?  The  fact  is 
that  no  one  man  ever  invented  any  great  thing.  The 
word  inventor  is  generally  used  in  any  particular  country. 


§  io6]  Personal  Property.  99 

for  the  last  man  in  that  country  who  took  the  last  im- 
portant step  in  the  evolution  of  any  great  invention. 
When  you  try  to  find  out  who  invented  the  steam-engine 
or  the  telegraph,  for  instance,  from  a  book — especially  a 
schoolbook  designed  to  teach  patriotism,  if  it  is  an 
English  book,  you  will  be  apt  to  find  the  credit  given 
to  an  Englishman;  if  a  French  book,  to  a  Frenchman; 
if  a  German  book,  to  a  German;  and  so  on.  The 
explanation  is  not  so  much  that  patriotism  goes  wide 
of  the  truth,  as  that,  in  each  process,  so  many  elements 
enter,  that  it  has  taken  a  long  time  to  evolve  them;  and 
that  during  this  long  time,  the  whole  civilized  world 
has  learned  about  them,  and  people  in  all  countries 
were  apt  to  take  the  final  step  at  about  the  same  time 
— or  rather  a  variety  of  steps  which  accomplish  the 
result. 

But  whether  we  call  each  important  apparatus  giv- 
ing us  the  control  over  the  powers  of  Nature  an  evolu- 
tion or  an  invention,  it  is  the  product  of  ability. 
106.  Labor  abounds  Now  which  produces  most  of  the  wealth 
in  poorest  countries,  of  the  world.  Nature,  Labor  or  Ability? 
Generally  Nature  holds  out  more  wealth  to  the  poorest 
savages  than  to  the  richest  people  on  earth,  because  the 
wealth  of  the  savage's  country  is  yet  untouched;  but 
the  savage  has  not  tlie  ability  to  develop  it.  Labor  is 
more  abundant  amid  the  famines  of  China  and  India 
than  amid  the  wealth  of  Europe  and  America,  but  the 
Chinese  and  Indians  have  not  the  ability  to  guide  it. 
So,  as  places  with  the  most  natural  wealth  and  the  most 
labor  are  the  poorest,  and  those  with  the  most  ability, 
even  tho  their  natural  wealth  be  partly  used  up,  are 
the  richest,  the  difference  between  the  rich  peoples  and 
the  poor  ones  must  depend  upon  ability. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  civilization,  then,  the 
men  who  make  inventions  and  organize  industry 
secure  us  all  that  we  have  in  advance  of  the  people 
whose  industries  are  small.  If  there  were  no  great 
inventors  and  organizers  of  industry,  the  civilized  world 
would  have  to  go  backward  to  the  condition  of  people 
like  the  Chinese  and  East-Indians,  who  have  little  inven- 


loo  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  io6 

tion  or  organized  industry,  and  the  world  would  have 
to  stay  there  until  men  of  ability  should  arise. 

But  tho  our  discussion  must  deal  principally  with  the 
agencies  which  give  all  men,  in  proportion  to  their 
means,  the  largest  variety  of  utilities  at  the  lowest 
price,  I  should  be  very  sorry  to  be  understood  as  claim- 
ing that  result  as  alone  constituting  civilization.  The 
civilizations  of  Greece  and  Japan  show  us  much  to 
desire,  and  3'et  they  have  been  characterized  by  a  noble 
simplicity  that  suggests  the  question  whether  our  greater 
number  of  appliances  may  not  divert  too  much  of  our 
attention  from  more  important  things. 

.Q^  _,         _  Now    we    come    to    a    hard    question. 

pris'er  must  nay  When  the  product  is  sold,  is  it  at  all  cer- 
good  wages.  ^^-^   ^|^^^   ^^^   enterprisers   will   give   the 

employees  their  correct  share?  In  other  words,  are 
wages  generally  fair?  Of  course  the  share  is  generally 
given  before  the  collection  is  made — a  lump  sum  is 
agreed  upon.  There  is  no  way  of  making  each  man's 
sum  exactly  equal  to  his  share  in  production;  but  in 
the  long  run,  wages  must  reach  an  average  that  is  fair, 
and  probably  more  than  fair:  the  able  laborer  gets 
more  than  the  unable  one  everywhere  (95  a). 

The  reason  is  not  only  that  men  of  ability  so  increase 
the  product  that  they  can  afford  to  pay  more  than  the 
laborers  would  produce  alone,  but  because  all  men  so 
much  prefer  to  be  employers  rather  than  employed, 
that  they  will  pay  all  they  can  afford,  and  more,  rather 
than  be  driven  out  of  doing  business  for  themselves. 
Therefore,  except  in  times  of  unusual  depression,  there 
are  employers  actually  bidding  more  for  labor  than  they 
can  really  get  back  from  it.  They  can  bid  high  because 
men  of  little  ability  are  constantly  saving  or  inheriting  or 
borrowing  capital.  This  they  fritter  away  in  bidding 
for  labor  to  conduct  enterprises  that  are  beyond  them. 
Yet  while  men  of  little  ability  pay  more  for  labor  than 
they  can  make  it  worth,  men  of  great  ability  can  make 
it  worth  more,  and  therefore,  in  average  circum- 
stances, bid  it  up   in   competition   with   each  other  to 


§  ioq]  Personal  Property.  loi 

the  point  where  they  are  left  only  a  reasonable 
profit. 

But  in  times  of  depression,  when  there 
^bad'tiines^^^" '"  ^'"s  not  as  many  jobs  as  there  are  men, 
men  who  need  places  often  take  work 
for  really  less  than  they  produce;  yet  probably  not 
oftener  than  employers  pay  more  than  the  market  will 
return,  rather  than  shut  down. 

So  much  for  the  services  that  an  enterpriser,  when 
he  has  ability  enough  to  succeed,  renders  to  the  com- 
munity and  to  his  workmen.  Now  if  he  pays  his  men 
108  Where  ^^^  they  produce,  or  more,  of  course  he 

Ability's  reward  can  get  his  reward  only  out  of  product 
does  come  from.        ^^^^    ^^^^^    ^^^    ^^-^^    ^^^^^^    j^-^    ability 

called  it  into  being.  True,  he  does  not  make  or  even 
handle  a  thing  with  his  own  hands,  but  he  enables  other 
men  to  make  or  handle  two,  or  perhaps  a  hundred 
and  two,  where  they  could  otherwise  handle  only  one. 
He  gets  his  reward  by  making  more  things  with  a  given 
amount  of  plant,  labor  and  material.  Moreover,  where 
there  is  a  big  supply,  things  are  always  cheaper  than 
where  there  is  a  scant  supply. 

But  Vanderbilt  and  Stewart  did  not  make  things, 
yet  in  one  sense  they  did  make  things-in-New-York 
that  otherwise  would  have  been  things-in-Minnesota,  or 
things-in-Belfast.  There  is  a  difference  in  value  between 
a  thing-in-New-York  and  a  thing-in-Minnesota.  If 
there  are  more  barrels  of  flour  in  Minnesota  than  people 
want,  and  not  as  many  in  New  York  as  people  want, 
people  in  New  York  will  give  more  for  them  than  people 
in  Minnesota.  The  man  who  carries  them,  adds  to 
their  value,  and  if  he  carries  them  cheaply,  people  in 
New  York  can  afford  to  pay  him  a  profit  for  carrying 
them.  So  with  linen  between  Belfast  and  New  York, 
and  in  short  with  all  articles  moved  by  commerce. 

It  is  a  very  prevalent  fallacy  that  those 
nof'airby^hand"       "^^""^  "^^  ^^^  affect  the  mechanical  or  chem- 
ical qualities  of  an  article,  "produce  noth- 
ing".    This  is  but  an  extension  of  the  fallacy  that  the 
enterpriser  produces  nothing,  because  he  does  not  put 


I02  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  109 

his  hands  to  his  product.  The  value  of  an  article 
depends  upon  its  capacity  to  satisfy  a  need:  so  every 
man  who  touches  an  article  toward  placing  it  where 
it  is  more  needed,  must  add  to  its  value — must  really 
"produce"  the  added  value.  So  of  course  to  a  still 
greater  extent,  must  a  man  who  organizes  transporta- 
tion and  exchange. 

To  go  a  step  farther,  the  bankers  and  promoters  who 
finance  these  agencies,  add  to  the  value  of  the  articles 
handled;  and  to  take  other  steps,  so  do  the  govern- 
ments which  regulate  all  finance  and  industry;  so  do 
the  armies  and  navies  which  defend  the  country;  and 
now,  to  take  it  to  a  higher  issue,  so  do  the  thinkers 
and  writers  who  promulgate  the  correct  mechanical  and 
economic  principles  on  which  roads,  machinery,  vessels 
and  warehouses  should  be  built ;  and  farm- 
if^baJrconornks.  ^^2'  "lining,  manufacturing,  transporta- 
tion, exchange,  banking,  promoting,  gov- 
erning, and  fighting  be  conducted.  Still  another  step : 
the  promulgation  of  incorrect  principles  of  finance  and 
taxation  probably  destroys  more  value  than  earth- 
quakes, eruptions  and  wars.  The  silver  agitation  about 
1890  was  estimated  by  David  A.  Wells  to  have  de- 
stroyed values  to  the  extent  of  a  thousand  million 
dollars,  and  the  greenback  currency  of  the  civil  war 
probably  destroyed  as  much,  and  we  shall  see  farther 
evidences  of  destruction,  when  we  come  to  consider 
taxation. 

To  take  a  step  higher  still:  economic 
on"sou^nrmorfls?*^  ^"^  political  principles  and  moral  prin- 
ciples shade  into  each  other,  and  are  often 
identical;  so,  for  that  matter,  do  mechanical  principles 
and  moral  principles:  "an  honest  job"  is  a  phrase  of 
very  wide  and  just  application.  It  ought  to  be  easy 
then  to  realize  that  the  promulgators  of  sound  morals 
and  the  inspirers  of  good  conduct — the  good  preachers 
and  orators  and  writers,  also  create  value  in  material 
things — probably  more  value  than  all  other  classes  of 
men  put  together.  Probably  if  all  that  has  been  accom- 
plished in  the  world  by  Christ,  Confucius  and  Gautama, 


§  112]  Personal  Property.  103 

not  to  speak  of  Aristotle,  Bacon  and  Spencer,  could  be 
blotted  out  to-morrow,  much  the  greater  part  of  the 
value  in  material  things  would  be  destroyed.  An  ade- 
quate explanation  of  how  this  would  come  about,  would 
carry  us  farther  afield  than  this  treatise  can  go;  but 
some  hints  that  will  help  the  competent  student  to  work 
the  matter  out  for  himself,  have  already  been  given, 
and  if  he  will  keep  the  subject  in  mind,  he  will  find  it 
full  of  such  hints.  Some  very  specific  ones  are  given 
in  paragraphs  330-330(6).  He  can  start  now  with  the 
reflection  that  with  the  current  morality  swept  away, 
his  own  pocketbook  and  the  coat  on  his  back  would  be 
vastly  less  safe,  and  therefore  vastly  less  valuable,  the 
next  time  he  leaves  his  study,  and  even  while  he  reads 
this  in  his  study. 

It  hardly  need  be  said  that  the  pay  of 
distributfon°'*^^  °^  '^^^^  various  contributors  to  the  value  of 
goods  is  very  unevenly  distributed,  and 
one  is  sometimes  tempted  to  believe  that  those  who 
contribute  most,  get  least.  Certainly  the  august  beings 
who  rule  the  centuries  from  their  tombs,  knew  little 
material  splendor;  and  certainly  the  men  at  the  other 
extreme  who  can  do  nothing  but  what  they  are  told, 
and  do  that  poorly,  get  a  share  of  the  good  things  of 
life,  which,  tho  small,  is  larger  than  their  own  production 
— vastly  larger  than  they  could  get  if  left  to  themselves. 
And  paradoxical  as  it  seems,  and  in  illustration  of  the 
old  saw  that  extremes  meet,  is  the  fact  that  in  recent 
times,  the  other  portion  of  the  business  world  that  has 
been  notoriously  getting  more  than  its  share  of  produc- 
tion, is  at  the  other  end  of  the  line — not  the  enterprisers 
who  are  immediately  associated  with  labor — not  the 
"captains  of  industry"  at  the  factories  and  stores  or 
even  on  the  great  public  works  like  the  railroads  and 
steamship  lines,  but  those  who  determine  what  great 
public  enterprises  are  needed,  and  gather  up  the  scattered 
units  of  capital  from  all  over  the  country  or  all  over 
the  financial  world,  into  masses  big  enough  for  the  great 
enterprises — the  promoters  of  the  railways  and  trusts — 
the  bankers  and  the  officers  of  the  great  insurance  com- 


I04  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§112 

panies  and  other  financial  corporations.  In  their  prin- 
cipal developments,  the  functions  of  these  collectors  of 
the  general  capital  are  comparatively  new,  and  are  not 
yet  well  regulated  by  competition  or  by  law,  or  even 
by  public  opinion,  which  is  just  now  in  a  state  of  hysterics 
over  them.  It  has  therefore  been  easy  for  the  men 
conducting  these  functions  to  take  heavy  toll  on  the 
money  of  other  people  passing  through  their  hands.  A 
heavy  toll  is  legitimate,  for  the  ability  exercised  is  great; 
but  that  ability  is  too  often  devoted  to  making  the  toll 
unduly  great. 

113.  Paradoxes  of  The  subject,  however,  is  now  prominently 
°P'"'°"'  before  public  opinion  and  the  law,   and 

reasonable  regulation  must  in  time  be  secured — secured 
probably  long  before  reasonable  regulation  will  be 
secured  for  the  striking,  boycotting,  rioting,  burning, 
murdering  brute  who  thinks  that  because  his  hands 
follow  the  dictate  of  other  men's  brains,  he  makes 
everything  and  is  entitled  to  everything;  and  assumes 
that  his  right  to  stop  work  is  a  right  to  conspire  with 
others  to  stop  together,  and  force  others  to  stop  with 
them,  and  so  paralyze  the  activities  on  which  the 
welfare  of  all  depends — of  himself  more  than  the  others, 
if  he  but  had  the  wit  to  see  it. 

114  Whv  returns         Now  wc  rcach  the  very  serious  question 
of  labor  are  nearly    of  how  it  comes  that  the  laborer  seldom 
^^  '  gets  anything  above  the  current  rate  of 

wages,  while  the  enterpriser  and  promoter  may  get 
hundreds  or  thousands  of  dollars  a  day.  The  reason 
is  that  things  which  can  be  found  anywhere,  like  staple 
products  or  common  labor,  are  always  offered  for  sale 
in  lively  competition,  and  so  the  price  is  driven  down 
to  pretty  near  the  cost  of  production.  Mere  manual 
labor  of  the  pick  and  shovel  is  found  anywhere,  and 
can  live  on  cheap  food  and  lodging:  therefore  its  cost 
is  low.  The  more  intelligent  labor  of  the  high-class 
mechanic,  needs  a  nervous  system  kept  well  by  good 
food,  sleep  and  shelter,  informed  by  some  education, 
and  recreated  by  some  amusement.     These  things  cost 


§  115]  Personal  Property.  105 

more  money  than  the  coarse  laborer's  Hving,  and  are  not 
as  generally  to  be  fotand:  so  the  mechanic  gets  higher 
wages  than  the  mere  digger;  and  the  high-class  mechanic 
gets  higher  wages  than  the  low-class  one.  Neverthe- 
less, there  are  enough  mechanics  of  nearly  all  grades  to 
make  competition  among  them  active  (despite  the 
regulation  of  their  trade-unions),  and  so,  of  course,  their 
labor  is  kept  at  a  recognized,  tho  somewhat  fluctuating, 
market  price. 

Now  while  all  this  shows  why  Labor  is 
Ability ^varywfdely.  restricted  to  its  regular  wages,  how  is  it, 
when  we  get  into  entirely  different  con- 
ditions, with  the  irregular  and  often  enormous  profits 
of  Ability?  Ability  is  scarce:  it  generally  does  not 
compete  for  employment,  but  employs  itself;  hence 
there  is  no  price  fixed  for  it.  Whenever  it  does  accept 
wages — as  in  the  case  of  special  mechanics,  electricians, 
chemists,  etc.,  or  upper  clerks,  managers,  presidents  of 
companies,  etc.,  the  salary  is  a  matter  of  special  arrange- 
ment, and  generally  is  accompanied  by  an  interest  in 
profits  besides,  not  to  speak  of  the  St.  Valentine's  Day 
check  of  .p 1 00,000,  from  the  New  York  Metropolitan 
Street  Railway  to  Mr.  Vreeland,  its  president. 

What  determines  this  varying  and  sometimes  enor- 
mous factor  of  profits,  is  that  as  wages  and  raw  material 
have  a  current  market  price,  a  given  amount  of  them 
being  paid  for  by  different  men  of  ability,  they  will 
get  out  different  amounts  of  product,  varying  in  propor- 
tion to  the  different  amounts  of  ability  of  the  enter- 
prisers; and  these  will  produce  and  market  this  product 
at  different  rates  of  expense  for  plant,  office  expenses, 
interest  on  capital,  freight,  advertising,  drumming,  col- 
lecting bad  debts,  etc.,  etc.  They  will  all  have  to  sell 
at  pretty  nearly  the  same  price:  that  being  fixed  by 
those  having  least  talent  for  making  good  sales  and 
holding  out  for  high  prices.  The  others  will  have  to  come 
down  very  near  to  that  price  to  get  a  market ;  or  some- 
times, tho  seldom,  an  able  man  may  even  go  below  the 
current  price  for  the  sake  of  broadening  his  market.  But 
however  the  price  may  be  fixed,  the  profits  of  each  enter- 


io6  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§115 

priser  will  be  the  difference  between  his  price  and  the  cost 
of  producing  and  marketing.  That  difference  may  be 
on  the  wrong  side  for  those  who  produce  least  with  a 
given  amount  of  wages  and  raw  material,  and  are  most 
extravagant  in  office  expenses,  advertising,  freight,  etc. 
Those  who  exercise  most  ability  in  these  particulars, 
will  of  course  have  the  "most  profit.  That  profit  may  be 
enormously  increased  if  the  ability  is  of  the  very  excep- 
tional kind  that  generally  anticipates  the  course  of  the 
market,  and  buys  material  and  holds  on  to  product 
before  a  rise,  and  sells  before  a  fall. 
,,_  ^  .,  I,  .  The  capitalist,  instead  of  being  the  re- 
more  like,  Labor's  cipient  ot  the  lion  s  share,  as  he  is  com- 
than  Ability's.  monly  held  to  be,  generally  is  that,  only  so 
far  as  he  is  both  capitalist  and  enterpriser.  Otherwise, 
he  is  only  about  on  a  par  with  the  wage-earner.  Capital 
is  everywhere,  and  there  is  a  market  rate  for  it,  just 
as  for  wages,  tho  as  it  does  not  generally  need  its  in- 
come from  week  to  week,  it  is  more  apt  to  take  chances 
at  a  share  of  the  profits  than  the  laborer  is :  the  laborer 
nearly  always  (tho  not  always — not  in  fisheries,  for  in- 
stance) commutes  his  share  for  a  fixed  sum  regularly 
paid. 

As  the  laborer  and  the  capitalist  are  so  nearly  in 
the  same  boat,  the  unending  talk  of  the  conflict  between 
capital  and  labor  is  mainly  a  survival  of  words  from 
old  conditions.  In  the  early  days  of  the  great  industry, 
the  capitalist  and  the  enterpriser  were  generally  the 
same  man;  but  even  then,  the  struggle  for  shares  of 
product  was  really  with  him  as  an  enterpriser  rather 
than  as  a  capitalist.  Nowadays  when  the  enterpriser 
is  so  generally  merely  an  officer  of  a  corporation,  in 
which  his  share  may  be  little  or  nothing,  and  when 
he  is  apt  to  be  a  mere  borrower  of  all  or  most  of  his 
capital,  capital's  share  of  product  is  nearly  as  fixed  as 
labor's,  and  the  enterpriser  is  really  the  person  struggling 
to  see  how  much -he  can  realize  after  paying  both. 

The  conflict,  then,  so  far  as  there  is  any  conflict,  is 
between  Ability  on  one  side,  and  Capital  and  Labor 
on  the  other,  when  the  enterpriser  is  not  at  peace 


§119]  Personal  Property.  107 

with  capital  by  owning  most  of  it  himself, 
waste  time' a^rfd"°*    But  it  is  the  cheapest  sort  of  nonsense  to 

&S  '"calitali"^  ^^^^"^  ^^^^^  ^^  °^^  ^^y  "^^^  °^  ^^^gl^  abiHty 
waste  their  time  in  trying  to  grind  the 
face  of  either  capital  or  labor:  able  heads  are  apt  to 
be  too  full  of  making  money,  to  bother  themselves 
much  with  petty  means  of  saving  it.  The  pettifogging 
is  carried  on  by  a  lower  type  of  man;  altho  the  wisest 
men  make  mistakes,  and  all  men,  rich  as  well  as  poor, 
and  poor  as  well  as  rich,  see  their  own  side  too  exclu- 
sively. 

118.  Caoital  and  ^*  ^^  often  Supposed  that  if  the  laborers 

lab'or  powerless  thcmsclves  owned  the  factory,  or  the  store 
without  Ability.  Qj.  ^j^g  steamboat,  and  all  in  them,  they 
could  then  get  along  without  the  Man  of  Ability.  But 
in  the  first  place,  they  very  seldom  do  own  the  estab- 
lishment; and  where,  by  saving  up  and  putting  their 
money  together,  they  have  owned  it,  they  have  always 
failed,  unless  the  born  Man  of  Ability  arose  among 
them.  Then  the  born  Man  of  Ability  has  generally  in 
time  got  his  share  of  the  product,  and  until  very  lately 
(126),  he  has  generally  ended  as  the  owner  of  the  con- 
cern. 

And  he  has  not  stolen  it:  without  him,  the  thing  has 
generally  soon  been  shut  up.  But  where  he  has  taken 
hold,  he  has  -enabled  the  men  to  produce  enough  to 
pay  their  wages,  and  sometimes  more;  and  what  was 
over,  was  of  course  fairly  his  own  production. 

Outside  of  a  few  cooperative  establish- 
di?isbli!  "^^^^^  °^  ments  carried  on  by  very  exceptional  work- 
ingmen,  men  without  a  manager  have  not 
produced  enough  to  pay  their  wages.  It  seems  to  fol- 
low, then,  that  when  an  exceptional  establishment  does 
pay,  the  production  above  ordinary  wages,  is  pre- 
sumably the  manager's.  Karl  Marx  and  his  school 
say  that  the  manager  gets  this  production  and  more 
too.  The  modern  school  says  that  he  gets  less.  Mal- 
lock  says  that  the  workmen  produce  five  thirteenths  of 
the  output,  and  get  paid  for  seven  thirteenths.  Sound 
economists  agree  with  his  general  position,  tho  he  alone 


io8  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§119 

is  responsible  for  his  figures.  But  this  does  not  mean 
that  if  the  enterpriser  gets  six  thirteenths  of  what  is 
produced — that  if  every  day  he  were  paying  seven 
hundred  men  three  dollars  apiece,  he  would  get  eighteen 
hundred  dollars  a  day  to  each  man's  three  dollars.  It 
means  that  the  six  thirteenths  have  to  pay  not  only 
profits,  but  taxes,  insurance,  rent,  interest  on  borrowed 
capital,  and  dividends  to  stockholders,  if  there  are  any. 

120.  Enterprisers  ^^  ^  matter  of  fact,  what  the  enterpriser 
generally  get  less  generally  gets  out  of  the  six  thirteenths,  is 
than  nothing.  something  less  than  nothing  at  all— he  gen- 
erally uses  up  all  the  money  that  has  been  put  in  the 
business,  and  fails  (loi).  The  wage-earners  get  their 
share  first,  and  next  the  other  claimants — landlord,  sup- 
pliers of  machinery,  fuel,  raw  material  and  merchandise, 
and  lenders  of  money — get  what  they  can,  and  if  there 
is  anything  left  (which  in  most  cases  there  is  not),  the 
enterpriser  gets  it. 

But  to  the  casual  observer  of  the  business  world,  all 
this  will  read  like  nonsense.  He  will  naturally  ask:  If 
the  money  embarked  in  business  is  generally  lost — if 
ninety-nine  enterprisers  in  a  hundred  lack  the  ability 
to  succeed,  how  can  large  industries  be  carried  on  at 
all?  They  are  carried  on  by  the  one  man  in  a  hundred, 
or  the  one  in  a  thousand.  Until  an  enterpriser  has 
proved  himself,  people  will  not  trust  liim  with  much 
capital.  So  before  much  is  lost  by  incapable  managers, 
they  fail — competition  weeds  them  out  and  returns  them 
to  the  ranks,  while  the  capable  ones  survive  to  conduct 
the  large  industries. 

121.  Handworl<ers  We  have  Spoken  so  far  mainly  of  Ability 
of  special  Ability,  ^g  guiding  mechanics  or  others  who 
handle  material  things.  Let  us  stop  a  moment  to  con- 
sider other  men  of  ability  who  work  with  their  muscles. 
Artists,  musicians,  public  performers  of  all  kinds,  work 
with  their  muscles,  and  sometimes  those  of  great  Ability 
make  thousands  of  dollars  an  hour.  "Goods"  are  not 
all  of  them  mere  material  things:  art,  literature  and 
science  are  among  the  highest  goods,  and  people  pay  high 
for  them,  when  of  best  quality,  whether  in  music,  books, 


§  123]  Personal  Property.  109 

pictures,  statues  and  beautiful  houses,  or  fees  to  doctors, 
lawyers  and  engineers. 

122.  Property  not  Property,  then,  is  not  only  in  tangible 
all  tangible.  things :  some  of  the  most  valuable  proper- 
ties are  in  mere  rights,  such  as  the  rights  to  make  and 
sell  patented  inventions  and  (tho  seldom  of  equal  value) 
copyrighted  books,  music  and  pictures.  Some  other 
examples  of  mere  rights  that  have  a  money  value,  are 
that  at  the  great  fairs,  the  rights  to  keep  restaurants, 
rent  out  rolling  chairs,  sell  papers,  candy,  and  even 
peanuts,  are  sold  for  large  sums.  So  often  are  rights 
to  put  down  railways,  even  before  a  tool  has  been  used 
in  the  work. 

Of  course,  to  exercise  ability  and  reap  its  rewards,  a 
man  need  not  necessarily  either  guide  hands,  his  own 
or  others',  in  producing  or  handling  material  things. 
Not  to  speak  of  inventors,  the  lawyers  and  statesmen 
regulate  productive  industry,  and  so  add  to  production. 
We  might  liken  the  world  to  steam  machinery.  The 
steam-power — the  engine,  is  labor;  machines — like  looms 
and  cotton-gins,  are  the  ability' that  makes  the  power 
useful ;  and  the  lawyers  and  statesmen  are  the  governors 
and  fly-wheels.  So  far  as  they  see  that  justice  is  done, 
that  taxes  are  wise  and  government  good,  they  keep 
things  running  easily  and  smoothly — the  power  from 
being  wasted,  and  the  machines  from  going  too  slow,  or 
so  fast  as  to  tear  themselves  to  pieces. 

123.  Comoarative  There  seems  to  be  a  general  impression, 
Drofits  in  different  but  it  is  a  doubtful  One,  that  business  men 
fields  of  Ability.  ^^  abihty— who  control  material  things, 
are  as  a  rule  richer  than  the  surgeons,  and  artists,  and 
lawyers,  and  statesmen.  It  is  certainly  doubtful 
whether  they  are,  in  proportion  to  their  numbers;  many 
doctors  and  lawyers  are  rich,  but  there  are  a  great  many 
more  men  in  business,  and  therefore  a  great  many  more 
rich  ones,  and  of  the  comparatively  few  men  in  the 
fine  arts  and  the  other  professions,  by  no  means  all 
have  much  ability,  any  more  than  have  men  in  business. 

Whether  as  a  question  of  causes,  or  as  one  of  natural 
justice,  there  are  certainly  few  questions  more  interest- 


no 


The  Protectioji  of  Rights.  [§124 


ing  than  why  a  few  men  have  most  all  the  ability,  and 
therefore  most  all  the  property,  while 
have  great^Ab^iiTy.  ^^ost  men  have  Very  little  of  either ;  and 
it  is  but  a  superficial  answer  to  say  that  it 
is  probably  for  the  same  reason  that  a  few  horses  have 
all  the  speed  and  beauty :  for  we  do  not  know  the  answer 
much  better  regarding  the  horses  than  regarding  the 
men.  The  causes  are 'all  a  question  of  evolution,  not 
very  well  worked  out  yet. 

The  truths  we  have  been  considering  about  the  shares 
of  the  various  producers,  have  not  long  been  understood. 
125  D'  f    '^^^  bottom  ones  were  first  clearly  stated 

the'foregoing  in  General  Walker's  "Political  Economy", 
^  in   1874,  and  since  then  they  have  been 

followed  up  and  expanded,  particularly  by  Professor 
Marshall  and  Mr.  Mallock.  It  used  to  be  believed  that 
what  the  enterpriser  got,  he  got  by  having  control  of 
the  tools  and  materials,  the  store,  the  railroad,  the 
steamboat,  and  forcing  his  men  to  let  him  keep  a  part 
of  what  they  really  produced  or  exchanged. 

126.  Ability  The  Man  of  Ability  is  certainly  appear- 
increasing.  jng  oftener  than  he  used  to.  A  new  state 
of  affairs  is  growing  up  in  England.  At  last  workmen 
are  putting  their  money  together  and  enterprising  their 
own  industries,  and  are  rapidly  developing  so  much 
ability  that  they  can  manage  themselves  through  direct- 
ors elected  by  themselves.  Of  course  they  cannot  all 
be  bosses,  but  they  are  capable  of  directing  sufficiently 
to  prevent  having  to  depend  entirely  on  any  one  or 
two  men;  and  the  rank  and  file  are  developing  sense 
enough  to  help  their  leaders  instead  of  hindering  them, 
as  has  been  too  often  the  case  before. 

127.  Suum  That  men  who  are  mere  machines — who 
cuique.  do  not  economize  production,  have  any 
just  title  to  profits  from  economized  production — that 
men  who  take  no  part  in  organization,  have  any  just 
claim  in  the  profits  from  organization,  are  both  prop- 
ositions which,  however  desirable  the  advance  of  such 
men's  lots  may  be,  are  too  absurd  to  promote  such  an 
advance,  or  any  other  good  thing.     But  such  descrip- 


§  I2S]  Personal  Property.  iii 

tions  of  limited  function  do  not  apply  accurately  to 
many  men,  and  ought  not  to  apply  to  any.  As  already 
intimated,  there  is  ability  in  varying  amount,  among 
men  who  are  directed  by  larger  ability;  and  the  ability 
of  men  under  direction  can  be  stimulated  and  increased. 
Moreover,  it  is  plain  that  ability,  little  or  big,  should 
have  its  little  or  big  share  of  profits. 
,„o  w  ■  A  rough  and  limited  justice  in  this  re- 

128.  Minimum  ,    .       °  ,  ,11 

wage  and  slid-  gard  IS  already  reached  by  wages  varying 
ing  scale.  somewhat  with  the  productiveness  of  em- 

ployees, but  the  justice  is  very  rough  and  very  limited. 
Various  schemes  have  been  tried  to  improve  it.  Among 
them  have  been  sliding  scales  of  wages,  varying  with 
the  profits  of  the  business.  A  minimum  wage  (272  d, 
276)  is  of  course  a  necessary  feature  of  this:  for  the  men 
cannot  be  expected  to  have  any  reserves  to  fall  back 
upon  if  the  business  pays  no  profits,  and  moreover,  in 
many  such  cases,  they  go  on  producing  in  their  way, 
and  are  entitled  to  their  production.  If  the  enter- 
priser cannot  make  money  out  of  it,  that  is  his  risk — 
a  risk  he  often  takes  for  the  sake  of  his  men,  when,  in 
a  sense,  it  is  no  risk  at  all,  but  a  dead  certainty  against 
him.  Nevertheless,  in  average  cases,  an  enterpriser 
sets  his  men  to  making  product,  from  the  expectation 
that  he  will  make  a  profit  on  it,  and  there  can  be  no 
question  that  so  far  as  labor  goes  into  that  product, 
the  product  belongs  to  labor,  and  labor  is  entitled  to 
the  value  from  it  which  was  commuted  as  wages.  Hence 
a  minimiTm  wage,  with  an  advance  varying  with  profits, 
is  a  clearly  logical  scheme,  at  least  so  far  as  concerns 
the  minimum.  As  concerns  the  advance,  it  is  logical 
so  far  as  profits  are  contributed  to  by  advanced  energy, 
carefulness  and  economy  on  the  part  of  the  workmen; 
but  it  is  not  logical  so  far — and  that  is  the  main  dis- 
tance— as  the  profits  depend  upon  initiative,  organizing 
ability,  prophetic  sense,  study  of  the  market,  and  finan- 
ciering abilit}^ — all  on  the  part  of  the  employer.  As  soon 
as  a  workman  shows  any  appreciable  amount  of  these 
rare  elements  of  ability,  the  question  of  a  sliding  scale 
of  wages  will  have  brief  interest  for  him :  his  employers 


112  The  Protection  of  RigJits.  [§  128 

will  be  only  too  glad  to  use  him  in  some  higher  place 
where  such  questions  do  not  arise,  or  he  will  himself 
be  able  to  put  himself  there.  It  would  appear,  then, 
that  the  portion  of  profits  which  can  reasonably  be 
devoted  to  a  rising  scale  of  wages,  beyond  the  amount 
to  which  the  wage-earner  is  entitled  anyhow,  cannot 
be  a  very  large  one. 

129.  No  lack  of  I^  the.  various  schemes  for  making  the 

opportunity,  whole  establishment  a  vast  partnership,  it 

will  not  do  to  lose  sight  of  the  same  principles.  As 
the  man  of  ability  is  a  rare  product  of  Nature,  and 
as  any  considerable  business  is  fated  to  destruction 
without  him,  and  as  he  must  provide  his  weaker 
brethren  with  their  wages,  and  bear  whatever  losses 
may  arise  in  so  doing,  whatever  profits  come  out 
of  the  concern  (and  as  said  before,  comparatively  few 
men  who  essay  the  task,  bring  out  any)  are  logically 
his,  except  in  the  small  degree  that  his  men  may  be 
able  to  contribute  his  kind  of  virtues.  The  difficulty 
of  their  contributing  them  is  not  only  in  the  rarity 
of  such  virtues,  but  in  some  small  degree,  as  business  is 
inevitably  organized,  in  opportunity.  But  how  rela- 
tively small  that  lack  of  opportunity  is,  can  be  realized 
only  by  those  who,  like  the  writer  of  these  lines,  have 
been  for  many  years  anxiously  watching  among  a  group 
of  subordinates  for  the  slightest  gleam  of  business 
capacity,  and  on  finding  it,  in  one  man  in  scores,  eagerly 
setting  it  to  fitting  work;  and  this  at  least  as  much 
from  selfish  motives  as  from  desire  to  give  another  his 
due  chance. 

The  minimum  wage  and  the  small  share  in  profits 
(and  none  in  losses)  being  then  the  best  present  chance 
of  the  man  who  lacks  the  ability  to  rise  beyond  wage- 
earning,  and  that  chance  being  distributed  with  an 
approach  to  uniformity  that  but  very  roughly  recog- 
nizes differences  in  capacity,  what  can  be  done  to  give 
the  wage-earner  a  better   chance?      Whatever  can  be 

done,  he  will  do  most  of  himself.      Gen- 
to  e'mbrace^it.^'''^    ©rally  he  will  do  nothing  beyond  furnishing 

an  equivalent,  more  or  less  adequate,  for 


§131]  Personal  Property.  113 

his  wages,  and  will  finish  his  life  as  he  began  it.  As 
the  world  is  now  organized,  sometimes  he  will  show 
enough  ability  to  attract  the  attention  of  his  superiors, 
and  will  be  welcomed  to  such  higher  functions  in  the 
establishment  as  he  is  able  to  perform — perhaps  its 
headship.  Sometimes  he  will  save  his  money,  and 
start  a  little  industry  of  his  own.  In  this  he  will  gen- 
erally fail,  and  revert  to  the  ranks.  In  rare  cases  he 
will  succeed,  and  furnish  opportunities  to  make  a  living 
to  some  who  cannot  make  opportunities  for  them- 
selves. In  rarer  cases,  he  will  furnish  enough  such 
opportunities,  and  exercise  enough  capacity  in  shaping 
and  handling  the  results,  as  to  make  himself  rich, 
whereupon  all  those  for  whom  he  has  provided  the 
opportunities,  will  say  that  he  has  got  rich  by  robbing 
them.  Or  finally,  by  becoming  a  cooperator,  our  wage- 
earner  may  get  the  benefit  of  whatever  ability  may  be 
in  him,  and  may  rise  without  incurring  jealousy.  But 
success  in  producing  has  so  far  attended  very  few 
cooperative  experiments  before  they  had  ceased  to  be 
cooperative,  and  had  come  under  the  ownership  of 
men  of  ability.  Yet  more  men  of  ability  appear  to 
be  developing  from  the  ranks,  and  the  ability  of  the 
ranks  themselves  seems  increasing. 

As  to  the  question  of  natural  justice  already  alluded 
to — does  it  seem  right  that  because  one  man  is  born 

very  able,  and  another,  who  may  be  a 
offoi'tuilrnght?^    better  man  at  heart,  is  not  very  able,  the 

first  should  be  prosperous,  and  the  second 
poor?  That  depends  upon  what  we  mean  by  "right", 
and  that  again  depends  upon  what  we  are  using  the 
word  for.  If  we  are  using  it  for  our  hands,  the  right 
hand  is  the  one  most  people  can  use  best ;  if  we  are  talk- 
ing about  a  right  line,  it  means  one  that  goes  direct 
from  point  to  point;  if  a  clergyman  speaks  of  a  right 
action,  he  means  such  a  one  as  his  church  would  approve ; 
a  lawyer  means  by  a  right,  something  that  the  govern- 
ment, or  the  law,  will  or  should  secure  to  a  man;  and  a 
philosopher  would  mean,  an  act  for  the  greatest  good 
of  the  greatest  number,  or  he  might  mean  an  act  in 


114  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§131 

accord  with  Nature's  laws.  The  fortunes  of  Peabod}^ 
Cooper,  Vanderbilt  and  Stewart  are  certainly  in  accord 
with  Nature's  laws,  and  therefore  in  this  sense  must  be 
"right".  As  to  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest 
number,  probably  few  would  question  regarding  Pea- 
body's  and  Cooper's;  and  certainly  Vanderbilt's  and 
Stewart's  resulted  from  work  which  "the  greatest 
number"  could  well  afford  to  pay  the  fortunes  for,  if 
they  had  had  to.  But  they  did  not  have  to:  for,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  fortunes  would  not  have  existed  but 
for  the  savings  effected  for  the  community,  part  of 
which  savings  made  the  fortunes  of  the  enterprisers. 

Admitting,  then,  that  wealth  honestly  acquired  is 
right,  especially  when  used  as  Peabody  and  Cooper  used 
theirs,  is  the  corresponding  poverty  right  too? 

Well,  if  "corresponding  poverty"  means  that  the 
majority  of  mankind  is  poor  because  the  minority  is 
rich,  there  is  no  "corresponding  poverty":  men  of 
ability  while  making  their  own  fortunes,  imiprove  those 
of  their  employees  and  of  the  whole  com.munity,  in- 
stead of  diminishing  them.. 

We  often  find  things  in  accord  with  Nature's  laws 
that  seem,  not  for  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest 
number,   but   even   to   our   finite   vision,   investigation 
generally  shows  that  the}^  only  seem  so. 
132.  Evils  have  True,   Nature  is  a  hard  mother  to  the 

their  uses.  ineffective  man.     She  starves  him,  freezes 

him,  often  kills  him,  unless  the  effective  man  guides 
him  or  saves  him  by  charity.  She  fills  the  world  with 
beauty  and  opportunity;  but  so  far,  she  has  evolved 
few  who  care  for  the  beauty,  and  fewer  still  who  can 
seize  the  opportunity.  Harder  still,  perhaps,  she  even 
takes  away  from  the  ineffective  man  most  of  anything 
he  may  have,  and  passes  it  around,  unless  it  is  wasted, 
until  it  reaches  the  hands  of  the  effective  man.  Truer 
words  were  never  spoken  than:  "Unto  every  one  that 
hath,  shall  be  given,  and  he  shall  have  abundance;  but 
from  him  that  hath  not,  shall  be  taken  away  even  that 
which  he  hath." 

And  yet  Nature,  by  her  very  hardness,  through  forcing 


§  132]  Personal  Property.  115 

her  children  to  help  themselves  and  depend  for  help 
on  each  other,  has  evolved  from  the  ineffective  merci- 
less savage,  the  effective  sympathetic  man ;  and  through 
him  she  is  indirectly  showing  to  her  less  favored  children 
the  mercy  that  she  does  not  show  directly. 

Poverty  and  disease  exist  only  because  Nature  (in- 
cluding the  man  she  has  evolved)  has  not  yet  worked 
entirely  beyond  them.  Nevertheless,  great  numbers  of 
people  have  vowed  not  to  help  in  the  improvement,  but 
to  be  poor  all  their  lives,  because  they  thought  it  for 
their  own  good,  and  for  the  good  of  their  fellow  men; 
and  some  of  them  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  try  to 
make  themselves  sick  by  fasting  and  vigils.  We  can 
hardly  assume  that  there  was  not  any  truth  whatever 
in  their  ideas.  But  good  people  often  do  very  foolish 
things  because  they  get  too  enthusiastic  over  one  part 
of  the  truth.  The  part  here  is  that  poverty  and  sick- 
ness, being  natural,  must  have  some  good  resulting  from 
them,  but  the  good  is  in  overcoming  them,  not  in  seek- 
ing them,  as  the  ascetics  used  to.  Some  of  the  noblest 
efforts  and  wisest  discoveries  and  greatest  advances  of 
the  race  have  been  made  in  overcoming  poverty  and 
sickness.  In  fact,  the  history  of  civilization  has  been 
an  overcoming  of  disadvantages.  Most  of  the  intelli- 
gence and  morality  of  mankind  have  grown  up  through 
conquering  the  hard  conditions  of  Nature.  All  early 
men  were  savages,  man  has  become  civilized  only 
through  the  conquests  he  has  made.  Through  over- 
coming Nature's  difficulties,  he  has  become  brave  and 
strong;  through  hard  study  of  her  secrets,  he  has 
become  wise;  and  through  helping  others  who  would 
not  have  needed  help  if  there  were  no  poverty  or  sick- 
ness, he  has  become  benevolent. 

Poverty  and  sickness,  then,  do  tend  to  develop  use- 
fulness, tho  most  modem  men  prefer  to  have  their 
usefulness  arise  from  different  experiences,  even  at  the 
cost  of  disagreeing  with  the  early  saints. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

PROPERTY    AS    CAPITAL. 

The  sources  of  property  rights  we  have  so  far  consid- 
ered, are  Land  (including,  of  course,  its  rent),  the  wages 
of  ordinary  Labor,  and  the  profits  of  AbiHty. 

That  government  should  protect  all  those  property 
rights — in  rent,  wages  and  profits,  is  a  matter-of-course 
too  simple  to  discuss. 

Equally  of  course,  that  government 
Iftfed  to  "Govern"-"  should  protect  any  one  honest  dollar  of 
nent's  protection  rent,  wages  or  profits  more  than  any  other 
honest  one,  would  be  absurd.  If  a  laborer 
does  not  use  up  all  his  wages,  that  it  should  be  govern- 
ment's duty  to  protect  his  rights  in  only  the  portion 
which  he  uses  up,  would  be  an  idea  twice  as  absurd  as 
the  other.  And  ^^et  many  people  unconsciously  enter- 
tain that  idea.  Of  course  if  government  should  protect 
a  man's  enjoyment  of  his  wages,  it  should  protect  his 
enjoyment  of  his  savings. 

If,  instead  of  wasting  his  surplus  wages  in  expensive 
food  or  drink,  or  unnecessarily  fine  clothes,  he  sees  fit 
to  save  them  and  add  to  the  permanent  wealth  of  the 
community  in  the  shape  of,  say,  an  addition  to  his 
house,  or  to  add  to  the  amount  of  cultivated  land  by  a 
garden,  it  is  plainly  government's  duty  to  protect  his 
rights  in  them.  To  support  the  contrary  would  be  even 
more  ridiculous  than  to  support  either  of  the  previous 
suppositions. 

If  then,  instead  of  enjoying  his  savings  himself  by, 
say,  adding  to  his  house  or  garden,  he  sees  fit  to  provide 

ii6 


§13$]  Property  as  Capital.  117 

employment  for  other  laborers,  say  by  building  a  little 
factory  and  stocking  it  with  tools,  to  doubt  that  govern- 
ment should  equally  protect  his  rights  in  that,  would  be 
the  most  ridiculous  of  all. 

Supposing,  then,  that  instead  of  stopping  at  saving 
enough  to  build  a  little  factory,  he  were  in  time  to  save 
enough  to  build  a  big  one,  or  even  a  railroad,  it  is  self- 
evident  that  government  should  protect  his  rights  in  that 
too.  To  question  it  would  be  to  say  that  government 
should  protect  a  man  while  he  is  being  of  comparatively 
moderate  usefulness,  but  should  desert  him  as  soon  as 
he  begins  to  be  of  great  usefulness. 

Now  we  have  just  been  going  over  the  ground  through 
which  most  rich  men  have  become  rich.  The  men  who 
are  constantly  grumbling  that  the  "poor  man  stands  no 
chance"  keep  their  eyes  tight  shut  to  the  plain  fact  that 
the  vast  majority  of  rich  men  started  poor,  and  got  rich 
by  the  ways  we  have  been  describing.  Not  one  in  ten 
of  them  inherited  his  money,  and  when  he  did,  his 
father  generally  began  poor,  and  got  it  in  the  ways 
described. 

Yet  they  seldom  saved  all  they  made  use 
134.  A  man  who  of.  As  soon  as  a  man  shows  that  he  has 
can  hiVelt""  ^  the  ability  to  inake,  save  and  use  a  little 
money,  other  people  who  have  saved  are 
glad  to  lend  him  more.  Money  seeks  just  such  invest- 
ments. 

Money  thus  saved,  and  employed  in  the  instruments  of 
production,  is  called  Capital. 

The  usual  forms  of  capital  are  land — 
consisfs^fn.  *^^'"*^'  where  used  for  a  farm,  mine,  factory,  store, 
railroad,  or  anything  else  that  produces 
or  saves  wealth ;  all  tools  used  in  production — includ- 
ing machinery,  vehicles  and  animals;  all  stocks  of  goods 
for  sale ;  and  all  wages  and  other  expenses  to  keep  the 
industry  going  before  the  product  is  sold. 

We  first  named  the  essentials  of  modern  industry 
as  Labor,  Ability  and  Land.  But  as  we  have  gone  on, 
we  have  indicated  many  things  besides  land — such  as 


ii8  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  ^35 

buildings,  raw  material  and  machinery,  as  equally- 
essential.  Yet  altho  those  things  eventually  depend  on 
the  land,  it  is  much  handier  to  group  it  with  them 
under  the  name  of  Capital. 

If  capital  is  in  land,  it  gets  its  returns  in  Rent.     Even 

if  a  man  works  his  land  himself,  what  he  gets  more  than 

the  equivalent  of  wages,  can  fairly  be  called  rent.     If 

an  enterpriser  hires  tools,  what  he  pays  for 

136.  Rent.  them  is  often  called  rent.  If  instead  of 
hiring  tools  or  land,  he  goes  to  a.  man  whose  savings  are 
in  money,  and  hires  that,  in  order  that  he  may  buy 
land  and  tools  to  give  workmen  employment,  the  name 
given  to  what  he  pays  for  the  use  of  the  money  depends 
upon  whether  he  turns  over  a  share  of  his  profits, 
whatever  they  may  be,  or  pays  a  fixed  price. 

If  he  pays  a  fixed  amount  for  each  dollar 

137.  nterest.  ^^^  each  day's  use  of  it,  he  pays  interest. 
There  is  no  reason  why,  if  a  man  keeps  his  savings 

ready  to  hire  to  others  in  the  shape  of  money,  he  should 
not  get  paid  for  the  use  of  them,  just  as  he  is  paid  for 
the  use  of  them  if  he  puts  them  into  land  or  tools.  To 
deny  a  man's  right  to  interest  on  his  money  is  as  absurd 
as  to  deny  his  right  to  rent  for  his  land,  or  hire  for  his 
horse  or  boat  or  tools.  Yet  the  world  long  held  the 
opposite  opinion.  But  the  world  has  had  to  outgrow  a 
great  many  foolish  opinions,  and  will  have  to  outgrow 
a  great  many  more. 

In  the  good  old  times  when  people  were 

138.  Usury.  even  more  foolish  than  they  are  now,  all 
interest  on  money  was  called  usury,  and  the  taking  of 
usury  was  considered  wrong,  and  it  sometimes  is  still. 
But  only  interest  above  the  legal  rate  is  called  usury 
now,  and  there  is  not  even  a  legal  rate  everywhere. 

In  some  places  people  can  agree  on  what  rate  they 
please,  but  the  law  generally  provides  a  rate  that  shall 
apply  to  a  debt  in  dispute  or  otherwise  delayed,  until  it 
is  settled.  Yet  in  places  where  the  law  fixes  a  rate  which 
can  never  legally  be  exceeded,  such  laws 
against it^"'^  are  not  generally  observed.  They  are 
useless.  simply    ridiculous    survivals     of    the    old 


§1386]  Property  as  Capital.  iig 

superstitions  that  prevailed  before  people  knew  much 
about  money. 

About  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  public 
opinion  in  New  York  had  grown  sufficiently  enlightened 
for  the  passage  of  the  following  law  regarding  Interest. 
It  leaves  many,  perhaps  most,  of  the  large  transactions 
subject  to  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,  while  it  con- 
tinues the  alleged  but  illusive  paternal  policy  of  pro- 
tecting the  man  not  up  to  large  transactions. 

"The  legal  rate  is  six  per  cent.  A  corporation  cannot  plead 
usury  as  a  defence.  The  taking  or  agreeing  to  take  any  greater 
sum  renders  the  contract  or  obligation  void,  except  in  bottomry 
and  respondentia  bonds  and  contracts.  For  advance  of  money 
of  not  less  than  five  thousand  dollars,  payable  on  demand, 
made  upon  warehouse  receipts,  bills  of  lading,  certificates  of 
stock  and  of  deposits,  bills  of  exchange,  bonds,  or  other  nego- 
tiable instruments,  pledged  as  collateral  security  for  such  re- 
payment, it  shall  be  lawful  to  receive  or  to  contract  to  receive 
and  collect,  as  compensation  for  making  such  advances,  any 
sum  to  be  agreed  upon  in  writing  by  the  parties  to  such  trans- 
action." 

Tho  the  legal  rate  in  New  York  is  six  per  cent.,  the 
actual  rate  in  Wall  Street  is  generally  from  two  to  four 
per  cent.,  but  sometimes,  for  a  short  pinch,  from  one 
hundred  to  two  hundred  per  cent.  The  law,  in  New 
York  for  instance,  (except  as  modified  above,)  nominally 
punishes  taking  more  than  the  legal  rate,  by  canceling 
the  debt;  but  practically  does  not  punish  at  all.  The 
most  law-abiding  citizens  do  not  call  upon  the  law, 
though  it  would  enable  them  to  get  rid  of  their  debts: 
for  if  anybody  did,  he  would  not  have  to  pay  back  the 
money  borrowed.  But  a  man's  promise  to  pay  is  a 
more  sacred  thing  than  a  worn-out  law,  and  a  man  who 
acted  to  the  contrary  would  find  it  hard  to  borrow  the 
next  time  he  might  be  in  need. 

A  large  part  of  the  world  has  already  acted  more 
freely  than  New  York  upon  these  opinions  about  the 
138  rftj.  o/sappear- ^'^^surdity  of  usury  laws.  In  England 
ing from  eniiaht-    tlicrc  lias  uot  bccu  a  usury  law  for  over 

ened  communities.     .  1  •    ,  1    • 

thirty  years,  and  m  our  more  progressive 
states,   people   can   contract  for  any  rate  they  please, 


I20  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  138  6 

without  collateral,  tho  a  legal  rate  is  always  provided 
in  case  money  lying  in  dispute  is  ultimately  recovered. 

The  useless  and  ridiculous  law  is  kept  on  some  of  our 
statute-books,  however,  because  the  majority  of  voters 
are  too  stupid  to  get  trusted  with  much  money,  or  know 
much  about  money,  and  they  have  an  idea  that  a  legal 
rate  of  interest  enables  them,  if  they  can  borrow  at  all, 
to  borrow  lower  than  they  otherwise  could. 

The  fact  is  quite  the  reverse :  they  gen- 
lo^/cfie/s"'^'' '"'  erally  have  to  pay  more  than  the  market 
rate,  in  order  to  compensate  the  lender  for 
the  risk  of  their  appealing  to  the  law  to  release  them  from 
paying  back.  The  best  opinion  now  is  that  usury  laws 
are  a  disadvantage  to  everybody,  and  to  the  poor  man 
most  of  all.  The  poor  man  nearly  always  has  to  pay 
the  legal  rate,  while  the  rich  man  may  not  be  paying 
a  quarter  as  much;  and  when  the  man  in  good  credit 
can  get  all  he  wants  at  the  legal  rate  or  below,  it  is 
generally  impossible  for  even  the  deserving  poor  man 
to  get  it  below  the  legal  rate,  and  often  impossible  for  him 
to  borrow  at  all.  If  there  were  no  usury  laws,  he  would 
generally  be  able  to  get  money  at  somewhere  near  the 
market  price. 

Yet  in  baclc\A^ard  and  ignorant  countries,  clever 
usurers  sometimes  despoil  the  stupid  people  frightfully. 
Such  people  might  be  better  off  if  paternal  governments 
would  give  them  usury  laws.  But  a  people  professing 
(rightly  or  wrongly)  the  ability  to  govern  themselves, 
should  in  consistency  profess  to  be  able  to  make  their 
own  contracts. 

.,g  1^    ,  .  Now  let  us  take  up   a  new  phase   of 

associating  capital.     We  have  seen  (100,  103)  that  for 

^^P'*^'-  the    community    to    get    the    benefit    of 

"the  great  industry"  through  cheapened  product,  it  is 
necessary  to  do  things  on  a  very  large  scale,  and  there 
are  some  things  that  it  is  not  worth  while  to  do  at  all 
unless  they  are  done  on  a  very  large  scale — railroads 
and  steamships,  for  instance.  If  each  man  in  the  civi- 
lized world  who  is  rich  enough,  were  to  build  a  railroad 


§  140  a]  Property  as  Capital.  121 

or  a  steamship  or  a  great  factory  or  some  other  great 
convenience,  there  are  probably  not  half  enough  rich 
men  to  give  us  all  the  railroads  and  steamships  and 
similar  great  enterprises  that  are  needed.  Even  if 
there  were  enough  rich  men,  it  would  not  be  wise  for 
one  to  put  his  whole  fortune  into  making  one  or  two 
such  things :  it  is  never  wise  to  put  all  the  eggs  in  one 
basket.  In  fact,  there  are  some  very  important  enter- 
prises, such  as  new  inventions  and  mines  and  explora- 
tions, and  other  uncertain  things,  into  which  it  is  very 
unwise  for  anybody  to  put  more  than  he  can  afford  to 
lose. 

The  capital  is  generally  obtained  for  enterprises  too 
large  or  too  uncertain  to  be  undertaken  by  one  man,  or 
by  a  partnership  of  two  or  three,  by  a  great  number 
..„  ,  .       of  people — sometimes  thousands,  putting 

140.  Incorporations.   ,■,■'■  .  .1  j     1      .  •  c 

^  their  money  together,  and  electing  some  01 

their  number  to  manage  the  enterprise.  Judge  Bald- 
win *  says  that  probably  four  fifths  of  the  business 
capital  and  of  the  industry  of  the  country  are  now  rep- 
resented in  such  associations. 

But,  it  may  be  asked:  if  a  hundred  men  combine  to 
do  a  business,  how  would  anybody  want  to  trust  them, 
when  to  collect,  say,  a  hundred  dollars,  he  might  have 
to  sue  a  hundred  men  for  a  dollar  apiece?  The  law 
has  met  this  difficulty  by  providing  that,  under  proper 
circumstances,  a  number  of  persons  may  be  incorporated 
into  one  fictitious  person  called  a  Corporation,  and  that 
the  corporation  may  be  sued,  or  may  sue,  or  do  business 
in  almost  any  way,  just  as  if  it  were  a  single  person. 
\/[0<a).  Asaffect-  Morcovcr,  if  men  go  into  business  to- 
ing  liability.  getlicr  as  partners,  no  matter  if  each  puts 

in  only  a  tenth  of  what  he  has,  any  one  of  them  can 
run  the  firm  into  debt  so  that  all  might  have  to  pay 
out  all  that  they  have,  and  this  while  all  are  attending 
to  the  business  themselves  every  day.  Therefore,  if 
an  enterprise  were  proposed  to  be  owned  by  a  thousand 
partners  whose  interests  do  not  average  more  than  a 

*  "Modem  Political  Problems." 


122  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  140  a 

thousand  dollars  apiece,  apparently  nobody  would  be 
foolish  enough  to  take  an  interest,  when  any  one  of 
the  thousand  partners  might  run  the  concern  into 
debt  so  as  to  use  up  the  whole  fortune  of  any  of  the 
others.  Yet  people  have  often  been  just  that  foolish. 
A  very  conspicuous  case  is  that  of  the  Glasgow  Bank 
which  failed  in  the  seventies:  partners  who  were  not 
interested  more  than  a  hundred  or  two  dollars — some 
of  them  women  and  old  people  and  children,  were  de- 
prived of  that  and  of  all  their  other  means  of  support, 
to  pay  the  bank's  debts. 

After  such  experiences,  people  take  the  risk  of  these 
big  enterprises  only  because  laws  have  been  made  that 
the  members  of  corporations  observing  certain  rules  to 
protect  the  public  against  bad  management,  shall  not 
be  liable  for  the  debts  of  the  corporations  beyond  the 
amounts  they  have  invested. 

140  cw.  Perpetu-  lu  a  partnership,  if  a  partner  dies,  the 
'^y-  partnership  usually  comes  to  an  end ;   and 

(unless  careful  arrangements  have  been  made  to  the 
contrary)  the  business  must  be  sold,  even  if  it  is  bought 
in  by  the  other  partners  and  the  family  of  the  deceased. 
But  if  there  are  a  thousand  people  in  a  corporation, 
it  is  not  necessary  to  sell  the  whole  thing  out  whenever 
any  one  of  them  dies.  The  law  provides  that  corpora- 
tions shall  not  come  to  an  end  when  one  of  the  con- 
tributors dies,  but  that  his  share  shall  go  on,  without 
being  entirely  separated  from  the  rest,  to  those  who 
inherit  from  him. 

140  (c).  stocks  When  there  are  numbers  of  subscribers, 

and  bonds.  ^j^g  shares  are  kept  track  of  by  entering 

all  the  subscriptions  in  a  book,  and  issuing  for  them 
numbered  certificates,  called  shares  of  stock,  generally 
one  share  for  each  hundred  dollars  subscribed. 

Preferred  stock  is  a  separate  portion  of  the  total 
stock,  which  shall  be  entitled  to  a  certain  amount  of  the 
divided  profits  (dividends)  before  any  are  paid  on 
the  remaining,  or  "common",  stock.  Sometimes  the 
dividends  on  preferred  stock  are  "cumulative" — that 
is :  before  any  dividends  can  be  paid  on  common  stock, 


§i4oc]  '  Property  as  Capital.  123 

payment  must  be  made  for  any  deficiencies  of  previous 
years  below  the  rate  prescribed  for  the  preferred  stock. 

When  a  corporation  wishes  to  borrow  for  a  con- 
siderable time,  it  generally  executes  a  mortgage  (83) 
to  some  one  party,  who  sells  out  the  claim  secured  by 
the  mortgage,  in  portions  generally  varying  from  fifty 
dollars  to  one  thousand  dollars,  according  to  circum- 
stances. These  portions  are  expressed  in  documents 
under  seal  (82  d)  which  are  called  bonds  (83  a),  and  are 
sold  to  anybody  who  wants  them.  Many  of  ours  have 
been  bought  by  Europeans:  in  other  words,  the  Euro- 
peans have  lent  us  a  great  deal  of  money. 

The  chief  differences  between  stocks  and  bonds  are: 
(I)  a  certificate  of  stock  declares  that  the  holder  is  part 
owner  of  property,  while  a  bond  declares  that  the  holder 
owns  a  claim  against  a  property,  which  claim  is  fixed  in 
amount,  and  must  be  satisfied  before  the  owners  of  the 
property  can  benefit  from  the  property;  (II)  bonds 
have  a  steadier  value  than  stocks.  A  piece  of  property 
need  not  pay  more  than  a  hundred  cents  on  the  dollar 
upon  any  bonds  it  may  be  liable  for,  and  it  must  pay 
that  much  if  it  can,  and  it  generally  can :  for  people  are 
not  apt  to  take  bonds  on  a  piece  of  property  for  more 
than  a  part  of  what  it  is  worth.  But  if  it  turns  out  to 
be  worth  barely  the  amount  of  its  bonds,  the  stock- 
holders get  nothing.  On  the  other  hand,  if  an  enter- 
prise is  enormously  successful,  the  bondholders  get 
only  the  amount  of  their  bonds,  and  the  stockholders 
get  all  the  rest. 

Stocks  and  bonds  are  both,  in  effect,  claims  against 
property,  either  real  or  personal,  tho  the  law  regards 
both  the  Itocks  and  bonds  themselves  as  personal  prop- 
erty. 

People  sell  stocks  and  bonds  just  as  they  do  any 
other  value,  and  the  places  where  those  of  the  most 
prominent  companies  are  bought  and  sold  are  called 
stock-exchanges. 

The  prices  of  stocks  at  the  exchanges  become  guides 
in  settling  many  civic  questions.  When  business  is 
expected   to   be   good,   the   prices   of  stocks   are   high, 


124  The  Protection  of  Rights.         '         [§  140  c 

because  the  enterprises  they  represent  are  expected 
to  divide  good  profits — pay  good  dividends.  Therefore 
when  a  great  question  hke  a  poHtical  campaign  or  a 
war  is  before  the  people,  the  prospects  of  one  side  or 
the  other  will  affect  the  price  of  stocks.  So  when  a 
rise  in  stocks  generally  attends  the  good  prospects  of  one 
side,  that  must  be  the  side  which  makes  for  safety  of 
property,  activity  of  business,  and  high  wages. 

But  by  no  means  all  the  stocks  and  bonds  of  cor- 
porations are  dealt  in  at  the  stock-exchanges.  Only 
those  which  the  managers  of  the  exchanges  think  of 
enough  importance — probably  not  one  in  ten  thousand — 
are  put  on  their  lists. 

The  small  corporations  are  unfavorably  affecting  the 
craving  for  land  that  some  philosophers  think  the  wisest 
of  all  economic  desires.  Laborers  are  not  trying  to  own 
their  own  homes  as  they  used  to,  but  are  putting  their 
savings  more  into  all  sorts  of  incorporated  enterprises. 

To  sum  up :  the  principal  benefits  conferred  on  the 
community  by  corporations,  are  that  they  make  it 
possible  to  cheapen  product  by  the  fullest  develop- 
ment of  ' '  the  great  industry  " ,  to  carry  on  enterprises  too 
great  or  too  uncertain  for  private  capital,  and  to  secure 
interests  in  business  for  the  benefit  of  the  owners'  heirs. 

Another  advantage  is  that  their  stocks  and  bonds 
are  often  good  investments.  Yet  while  many  are, 
many  more,  perhaps,  are  not.  The  bonds  of  the  suc- 
cessful ones  are  very  convenient  investments  for  people 
who  have  a  little  more  money  than  they  want  to  put 
in  a  savings-bank,  but  have  not  money  enough  to  buy 
a  piece  of  land  worth  taking  care  of,  or  a  mortgage 
on  one.  Those  sold  on  the  exchanges  are  also  good  in- 
vestments for  funds  that  the  owner  may  want  to  use 
at  short  notice,  which  is  a  consideration  of  vastly  more 
importance  than  is  generally  realized.  Sometimes  even 
rich  men  get  into  trouble  because  their  wealth  is  in  prop- 
erty that  cannot  readily  be  sold. 
,.,  ,  There  never  was  a  greater  mistake  than 

lAi    LarfTB  cor* 

porations  not  all  the  Very  current  one  that  the  bonds  and 
owned  by  the  rich,    g^^^^^g  ^^  ^1^^  corporations  are  all  owned 


§  143]  Property  as  Capital.  125 

by  rich  people.  The  general  course  of  the  money  of 
people  of  moderate  means,  unless  they  have  it  invested 
in  their  own  homes  and  shops,  or  building  and  loan 
associations,  is  something  like  this:  a  great  deal  of 
it  goes  directly "  into  the  bonds  or  stocks  of  corpora- 
tions, and  much  goes  into  the  savings-banks;  the  sav- 
ings-banks gather  up  the  little  deposits  and  lend  them 
out  in  large  amounts,  sometimes  on  the  bonds  of  cor- 
porations, but  generally  on  mortgages  on  land;  and  the 
sums  thus  borrowed  are  very  largely  invested  by  the 
rich  in  the  corporate  enterprises  which  they  organize. 
So  the  fact  is  that,  at  bottom,  the  corporations  are  really 
largely  owned  by  people  of  very  moderate  means — 
especially  by  widows  and  orphans  who  cannot  go  into 
business  or  manage  real  estate. 

,-„  ,  ,  So  much  for  the  advantages  of  corpora- 

142.  Irresponsi-         ^ .  ^ ,  1       ^     .  r     ,  •       1 

biiity  of  corpora-  tions ;  now  there  are  elements  of  disad- 
^'°"^'  vantage.     The   chief  one  is  that,  as   the 

liability  of  shareholders  is  limited,  and  as,  in  the  large 
corporations,  it  is  an  impossibility  for  many  shareholders 
to  keep  close  oversight,  there  is  great  danger  of  reckless 
and  selfish  management.     This  danger  also  weakens  the  • 
credit  of  the  smaller  corporations. 

143  Ver  small  There  are  too  many  unimportant  little 

corporations  unde-  corporations,  not  only  because  of  the 
^"^'°^^-  advantages   over   partnership  already  ex- 

plained, but  also  because  some  time  ago  people  thought  it 
made  a  business  look  big  to  call  it  a  company.  But  that 
has  been  overdone:  the  financial  irresponsibility  of 
the  very  small  corporations  generally  makes  them  a 
nuisance;  especially  as  many  are  started  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  defrauding  by  the  pretentious  name  of 
a  "company",  and  without  personal  liability  beyond 
the  stock  owned.  The  privilege  of  incorporation 
should  not  be  given  below  a  considerable  amount  of 
capital.  The  evil  might  be  apt  to  correct  itself, 
however,  through  the  growing  unwillingness  of  people 
to  trust  them,  if  the  gull-crop  did  not  seem  inex- 
haustible. 


126  The  Protection  of  Riglits.  [§  144 

144.  Why  Labor  Labor  generally  regards  corporations 
hates  corporations,  with  extreme  disfavor.  As  corporations 
do  not  die,  and  generally  consist  of  so  many  people 
that  they  are  very  unlike  a  single  human  being,  it 
has  become  a  proverb  that  "corporations  have  no 
souls  ".  Moreover,  as  corporations  run  most  of  the 
very  large  industries,  they  are  always  most  prominent 
in  the  great  labor  struggles,  and  therefore  many  people 
have  come  to  dislike  them,  and  the  tendency  is  to  tax 
them  unduly.  Another  reason  why  they  are  over- 
taxed is  that  in  order  to  limit  their  liability,  they  have 
to  publish  some  of  their  accounts,  so  that  people  will 
know  how  far  to  trust  them;  and  the  tax-collectors 
are  thus  better  able,  as  they  are  generally  disposed,  to 
tax  them  for  all  they  are  worth.  They  cannot  do  this 
as  readily  to  private  concerns  that  do  not  have  to  pub- 
lish their  affairs. 

This  unfriendly  attitude  toward  corporations,  is  to 
be  deplored  when  it  extends  to  corporations  con- 
ducted fairly:  and  those  large  enough  to  cheapen  pro- 
duction through  "the  great  industry"  generally  are. 
So  far  as  they  are  unjustly  interfered  with,  their  ability 
•to  cheapen  things  is  impaired. 

145.  Danger  of  There  is  danger  in  their  being  very 
Monopoly.  large,  because  they  are  apt  to  become  so 
great  as  to  run  into  monopolies.  The  word  monopoly 
comes  from  two  Greek  words  meaning  "one"  and  "to 
sell",  and  it  means  anything  which  has  only  one  owner 
to  sell.  He  of  course  can  ask  what  he  pleases,  and  so 
long  as  people  will  bu}^,  his  price  is  not  limited  at  all 
by  the  cost  of  production. 

Until  Parliament  passed  the  statute  against  monopo- 
lies in  1624,  they  had  been  largely  given  to  royal 
favorites.  American  courts  have  always  held  them 
illegal  except  for  franchises  for  the  public  benefit,  which 
can  fairly  be  considered  to  include  patents  and  copy- 
rights, and  both  of  these  are  specially  sanctioned  by  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States. 


CHAPTER  X. 

COMPETITION,    MONOPOLY    AND    INDUSTRIAL    AND    LABOR 

TRUSTS. 

146.  Rights  of  '^^?  objection  to  a  monopoly  is  that  it 

and'to  competi-  deprives  the  pubHc  of  its  rights  to  Com- 
^'''"'  petition. 

There  are  two  principal  rights  regarding  competition. 
They  might  be  called  the  right  of  Competition,  and  the 
right  to  Competition.  Each  individual  has  the  right  of 
competition — the  right  of  competing  with  other  indi- 
viduals; and  the  community  has  the  right  to  competi- 
tion— to  the  reasonable  prices  and  improved  qualities 
of  goods  and  service  that  competition  brings. 

The  right  of  individuals  to  compete,  is  not  a  right  that 
all  are  eager  to  claim.  Lazy  people  do  not  want  to  com- 
pete, or  rather  do  not  want  to  have  anybody 
laz^^;  JndftJpid?"  compete  with  them;  they  hate  the  very 
name  of  competition,  and  want  the  state 
to  try  to  abolish  it,  because  it  forces  them  to  work 
harder;  and  incapable  people  hate  it  because  it  drives 
them  to  the  wall.  Yet  if  they  were  wise  enough  to  look 
at  the  question  as  consumers,  they  would  see  the  whole 
active  and  able  world  competing  to  make  things  better 
and  cheaper  and  more  various  for  them. 

To  illustrate  the  benefits  of  competition,  suppose  that, 
in  a  primitive  community,  milk  is  taken  around  in  goat- 
skin bags.  If  somebodv  comes  along  with 
ffied^'"'^*' '"""  a  tin  can,  everybody  will  get  milk  from  him 
coLemcre!**'^  Until  the  Other  dealers  get  tin  cans.  Then, 
suppose  somebody  else  brings  it  nicely 
measured   in    bottles  with    spring  stoppers,  instead  of 

127 


128  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  148  a 

slopping  it  into  each  customer's  pitcher  amid  the  dust 
and  heat  of  the  street;  pretty  soon  everybody  will  take 
from  the  bottle  man  until  all  dealers  supply  bottles. 
In  this  way  competition  will  have  supplied  the  com- 
munity with  good  milk  in  neat  bottles,  instead  of  milk 
apt  to  sour,  from  goat-skin  bags.  But  if  the  early  dealer 
had  kept  a  monopoly,  the  people  would  still  be  getting 
it  from  goat-skins.  To  carry  the  illustration  a  step 
farther:  in  some  parts  of  the  country,  the  milkman 
sits  in  his  cart  and  yells  or  rings  a  bell,  for  the  customer 
to  come  out  to  him;  in  the  other  regions,  where  compe- 
tition is  lively,  he  jumps  out  himself  and  carries  the 
milk  in. 
.,„  ^    ,         ,        To  illustrate  competition  in  means  of 

\^^(b).  In  travel.      ,  1-1  •  .r,-  1 

travel:  there,  as  m  everythmg  else,  new 
methods  are  constantly  driving  out  old.  The  railway 
competed  with  the  turnpike  road;  steam,  the  cable  car, 
the  trolley  and  the  automobile  are  competing  with  the 
horse;  and  the  bicycle  competes  with  mere  walking. 
148  (c).  In  com-  Perhaps  the  greatest  revolution  effected 

merciai traveling.  |-,y  competition  in  rcccnt  times,  is  the 
system  of  commercial  traveling.  A  generation  ago 
every  considerable  dealer  outside  of  the  great  cities 
had  to  go  to  them  at  least  once  or  twice  a  year  to  find 
out  what  was  going  on  in  his  line,  and  to  buy  a  large 
stock  of  goods ;  now  nearly  everything  is  brought  to  him 
by  samples.  Moreover,  as  the  travelers  are  constantly 
coming  to  him,  he  need  not  carry  nearly  as  large  a  stock 
of  any  particular  thing,  and  can  therefore  have  a 
variety  vastly  greater  and  much  fresher,  and  up  to  the 
latest  improvements.  Farther:  in  old  times  when  the 
country  merchants  went  to  the  cities  on  their  regular 
buying  expeditions,  they  were  very  apt  to  get  led  astray, 
and  leave  a  good  deal  of  money  that  they  brought  home 
nothing  to  show  for.  Under  the  new  system,  if  they 
go  to  the  cities  as  often  as  they  did  before,  they  certainly 
do  not  stay  as  long  at  a  time. 

The  army  of  commercial  travelers  with  which  com- 
petition has  crowded  the  country,  costs  a  great  deal 
more  than  the  old  system  of  dealers  going  to  the  cities. 


§i48(?]  Competition,  Monopoly,  Industrial  Trusts.      129 

But  it  costs  not  nearly  as  much  in  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  goods  exchanged :  the  risk  of  unsalable  stock 
is  so  much  lessened,  and  the  chance  of  getting  the  best 
and  freshest  thing  for  the  mone}^  is  so  much  increased. 
And  all  this  has  made  it  possible  to  supply  more  things 
and  newer  kinds  of  things  for  the  same  money.  That 
has  made  new  manufacturing  industries  possible,  and 
increased  the  demand  for  labor,  and  the  supply  of  con- 
veniences, in  very  many  ways. 

In  addition  to  the  more  direct  benefits  of  this  system 
of  competition,  commercial  travelers  have  improved 
traveling  facilities  in  general.  They  enable  the  rail- 
roads to  give  better  and  wider  service  than  they  other- 
wise could,  and  they  have  also  led  to  a  great  improve- 
ment in  the  country  hotels.  After  the  stage-coaches 
went  out,  and  before  the  commercial  travelers  came  in, 
the  country  hotels  got  into  a  very  bad  way. 

Competition  greatly  promotes  the  steadi- 
Ifon'^o/ p"/clf "'"'  ness  of  business.  It  regulates  prices,  and 
*and"su  ^f""^"''  I'nakes  their  rise  and  fall  so  gradual  that 
people  can  make  some  preparation  for 
either  :  when  goods  begin  to  be  abundant,  sellers 
begin  to  compete  by  lowering  prices;  and  when  goods 
are  becoming  scarce,  buyers  begin  to  compete  by 
offering  higher  prices.  To  put  it  in  moTe  scientific 
terms:  prices  are  regulated  by  demand  and  supply. 
Prices  are  steady  when  the  demand  for  goods  or  labor 
is  just  equal  to  keeping  them  in  use  at  the  prices  asked. 
That  equality  is  technically  called  the  Equation  of 
Demand  and  Supply.  When  the  equation  is  disturbed 
by  increase  of  supply,  competition  in  lowering  prices 
increases  demand  until  demand  and  supply  are  again 
equal.  When  the  equation  is  disturbed  by  increased' 
demand,  competition  bids  up  prices  and  chokes  off 
demand  until  demand  and  supply  are  equal, 
usee;.  Minor  That  "Competition  is  the  life  of  trade", 

exceptions.  jg  a,n  old  proverb :   it  is  of  great  benefit  in 

keeping  business  active,  and  men  at  work. 

Yet  it  may  not  be  quite  fair  to  say  that  rise  in  prices 
is  always  started  by  the  demand  of  competing  buyers. 


130  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§i48(? 

It  always  is  in  the  great  auction  exchanges  for  stocks, 
produce  and  real  estate,  where  probably  most  of  the 
world's  business  is  done.  Tho  of  course  private  dealers 
do  not  merely  mark  up  prices  of  staples  to  follow  the 
great  exchanges,  but  mark  them  up  also  on  other 
articles  when  they  find  their  stocks  running  short. 

149.  Evils  in  Every  good  thing  can  be  carried  to  an 

competition.  extreme,  or   used    in  a  harmful  way — in 

fact,  some  people  think  that  all  evil  tendencies  are 
merely  good  ones  misused:  accordingly,  competition 
is  sometimes  harmful.  It  is  often  called  harmful  in 
driving  out  of  business  men  who  lack  ability.  But  that 
is  not  harmful,  even  to  the  man  himself:  if  an  unable 
,.„,  ,  „  man    tries    to    conduct    business,    he    is 

149  (a).  Suppress-  .  ' 

ing  incapacity  not  always  keeping  his  customers  waitmg, 
among  them.  making  mistakes,  unable  to  furnish  good 

goods,  or  any  goods  at  moderate  prices  (except  as  his 
bankrupt  stock  ultimately  gets  into  the  bargain-stores) ; 
and  he  is  under  constant  temptation  to  cover  up  his 
incapacity  by  dishonesty.  His  custom  goes,  of  course, 
to  more  able  men.  Yet  there  ought  to  be  a  place  in 
the  world  for  a  man  whom  Nature  has  not  blessed  with 
business  ability:  some  of  the  best  of  men  have  lacked 
it.  And  there  is  a  place  for  him  under  the  guidance 
of  the  man  who  has  ability;  and  the  man  without  it 
is  much  better  off  there,  than  in  stumbling  along  by 
himself,  if  he  only  has  the  sense  to  know  it;  and  the 
community  is  vastly  better  off  for  his  being  there. 
H9(b).  Nor  is  The  notion  has  arisen  that  competition 

poverty.  {g  ^  causc  of  povcrty,  because  every  man 

who  is  not  conducting  business  himself,  and  sees  rich 
men  conducting  it,  thinks  that  if  he  were  conduct- 
ing business,  he  would  be  rich  too.  Every  mechanic  in 
the  shop  blames  competition  for  preventing  his  being 
boss;  whereas  if  he  were,  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases, 
he  would  soon  be  bankrupt  and  poorer  than  he  is,  and 
the  rest  of  the  men  thrown  out  of  employment.  The 
minority  who  are  really  able  enough  to  be  bosses,  are 
not   many   of   them   prevented    by   competition   from 


§  151]    Competition,  Monopoly,  Industrial  Trusts.       131 

becoming  bosses.  They  generally  do  it  in  good  time. 
149  cc;.  But  waste-  Yet  competition  is  very  often  wasteful, 
fulness  is.  ^nd  as  long  as  there   are  foolish  men,  it 

very  often  will  be.  But  as  to  its  driving  a  man  out  of 
business,  that  is  not  usually  because  of  waste  (unless 
it  is  his  own  waste),  but  because  another  man  can  make 
a  profit  by  supplying  the  community  at  rates  lower  than 
the  first  man  is  able  enough  to.  But  nevertheless,  there 
are  plenty  of  instances  of  competition  being  carried  to 
the  point  of  waste  on  both  sides — for  instance,  where 
advertising  or  drumming  (both  excellent  things  within 
limits)  is  carried  to  excess,  or  when  a  man  has  or  thinks 
he  has  more  money  than  his  competitor,  and  does 
business  at  a  loss  so  as  to  get  the  other's  customers 
away,  expecting  to  make  up  his  losses  after  his  com- 
petitor is  driven  out  of  business.  In  this  way,  before 
people  learned  better,  the  steamboats  in  the  West  and 
Southwest  sometimes  carried  passengers  for  nothing, 
and  even  threw  in  their  meals.  True,  the  public  got  the 
iKn  D  ki'     M       benefit  of  the   competition,   but  only  for 

150.  rublic  seldom  .  ^  '  -^ 

gainer  by  wasteful  a  time.  After  One  partv  was  driven  out, 
competition.  ^^^  ^j^^  monopoly  held  by  the  other,  the 

monopolist  could  put  prices  where  he  pleased.  Such 
business  is  not  really  competition,  but  an  effort  to  kill 
off  competition.  Legitimate  competition  is  really 
economical. 

But  leaving  out  of  consideration  persons  who  are 
ruined  by  wasteful  competition,  if  the  public  has  been 
accommodated  at  extra-low  prices,  they  might  be  no 
worse  off  if  for  a  time  they  have  to  pay  extra-high  ones, 
were  it  not  that  they  must  pay  them  long  enough  to 
make  up  for  the  waste,  and  pay  a  profit  on  it.  More- 
over, unsteady  prices  unsettle  business:  nobody  knows 
what  to  count  on;  and  prices  lower  than  they  ought 
to  be,  get  people  into  wasteful  ways  that  do  not  stop 
when  prices  get  normal  again. 

151.  Cooneration  0^6  is  tempted  to  believe  that  the  whole 
and  competition.  community  would  be  vastly  better  off 
in  wealth  and  peacefulness  if  competition  could  be  re- 
placed   by    cooperation — if    instead    of    all    struggling 


132  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  15^ 

against  each  other,  we  were  all  helping  each  other.  But 
on  considering  how  it  is  to  come  about,  one  is,  as  usual 
when  venturing  very  far  beyond  experience,  mired  in  a 
tangle  of  paradoxes.  Competition  consists  largely  in 
the  lowering  of  prices.  This,  instead  of  proving  com- 
petition a  bane,  shows  it  to  be  for  the  benefit  of  the 
public.  But  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  seen  that  as 
regards  the  competitors',  competition  is  often  attended 
with  great  waste  in  drumming,  advertising  and  ruinously 
low  prices.  Suppose  then  that  the  men  in  a  particular 
trade  get  together  and  agree  that  they  could  make  more 
by  helping  each  other  than  by  fighting  each  other ;  and 
so  make  elaborate  agreements  to  regulate  prices  and 
limit  advertising  and  drumming,  or  combine  all  their 
businesses  under  the  regulation  of  a  few  of  the  principals. 

This  has  been  done  in  the  trusts.  But 
152,  Capital  trusts,  while,  under  them,  the  members  of  the 

trade  get  the  benefit  of  cooperation,  the 
public  loses  the  benefit  of  competition.  Here  is  our 
paradox:  apparently  we  could  benefit  by  helping 
each  other,  but  as  soon  as  we  try  it  in  the  business 
world,  somebody  gets  hurt.  Yet  it  is  true  that  with 
less  "human  nature",  the  trusts  could  both  lower 
prices  and  increase  profits.  Even  as  matters  are, 
it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  they  do  not.  It  is  very 
certain  that  during  the  phenomenal  advance  of  prices  in 
America  in  the  first  half-dozen  years  of  the  twentieth 
century,  oil,  the  most  trust-guarded  of  all  commodities, 
advanced  among  the  least.  But  advances,  whatever 
they  may  be,  do  not  negative  the  fact  that  with  less 
"human  nature",  trust-economized  goods  would  be 
the  cheapest,  and  would  prove  cooperation  better  than 
competition.  So  we  can  keep  on  hoping  for  a  co- 
operative world,  but  it  is  destruction  to  try  to  realize 
it  any  faster  than  human  nature  makes  the  realization 
practicable. 

Mr.  Bellamy  expounded  the  notion  of  the  benign 
trust  in  one  commodity,  into  a  benign  trust  in  all,  its 
functions  to  be  conducted  by  the  state.  The  benefits 
that  he  imagined  from  such  a  system  were  so  great 


§152  a]   Competition,  Monopoly,  Industrial  Trusts.     133 

that  he  pictured  the  average  family  as  Hving,  instead 
of  at  the  present  average  of  six  or  seven  hundred  dol- 
lars a  year,  at  an  average  of  some  thirty  thousand.  The 
benign  trust  alone  is  probably  far  beyond  the  range  of 
human  vision;  farther  still  is  the  degree  of  poHtical 
capacity  essential  to  the  public  administration  of  one; 
farther  still,  the  political  capacity  to  administer  all; 
and  when,  if  ever,  these  remote  ideals  have  been  realized, 
they  will  need  to  be  reinforced  by  human  control  of 
natural  forces,  to  a  degree  that  still  farther  staggers 
imagination,  before  the  good  things  of  this  life  can  be 
multiplied  the  fifty-fold  that  many  dreamers  fancy 
would  result  from  an  even  distribution  of  the  present 
product. 

But  to  come  back  to  the  world  we  know.  A  trust,  if 
properly  conducted,  not  only  does  away  with  wasteful 
competition,  but  it  has  more  of  the  advantages  of  "the 
great  industry"  than  smaller  individual  businesses  could 
have:  it  is  getting  to  be  an  old  story  that  the  large 
production  is  the  cheap  production. 
152  (a).  Their  Moreover,  the  trusts  save  expenses  by 

economy.  using  fewer  managers,  clerks  and  buildings, 

as  well  as  by  diminishing  traveling  and  advertising. 
Where  the  businesses  to  be  united  in  the  trust  are  con- 
ducted separately,  many  of  these  items  are  unnecessarily 
duplicated  The  trusts  are  said  to  have  dispensed  with 
150,000  commercial  travelers  from  '97  to  '99,  leaving 
these  men  to  go  into  industries  supplying  new  comforts 
and  luxuries,  or  old  ones  cheaper. 

But  that  economy  is  effected  by  driving  people  out 
of  work.  That  certainly  is  a  benefit  to  the  consumer, 
if  the  trust  gives  him  part  of  the  saving,  tho  it  is  not 
at  the  moment  a  benefit  to  the  people  driven  out  of 
work.  But  new  demands  for  labor  are  created  by  the 
money  saved  through  cheapened  production:  therefore 
people  thrown  out  of  work  to  save  that  money,  will 
soon  be  at  work  again  (331),  and  also  benefiting,  as 
consumers,  by  the  cheapened  production;  and  the 
drummers  will  soon  be  drumming  again  for  new  bene- 


134  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§1520 

fits  to   the  community,*  or  conferring  them  in  other 
ways. 

If  trusts  do  away  with  wasteful  competition  by  crush- 
ing out  estabhshments  that  do  not  join  them,  there  are 
two  sides  to  the  question.  Of  course  having  so  much 
capital,  and  being  able  to  produce  so  low  under  the 
great  industry,  if  it  is  their  interest  to  keep  prices 
low  enough,  the  trusts  can  run  destructive  opposition 
to  individuals:  but  on  the  other  hand,  after  they  have 
driven  off  competition,  they  may  get  prices  so  high 
as  to  encourage  individual  concerns  to  enter  the  busi- 
ness. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  these  considerations  have  often 
kept  the  profits  of  monopolies  within  bounds.  The 
weight  of  intelligent  opinion  is  that  but  a  small  relative 
proportion  of  the  great  fortunes  has  been  made  in 
monopolized  industries,  but  that  most  have  been  made 
in  industries  open  to  anybody  with  the  ability  to  con- 
duct them. 

The  Census  returns  for  1900  declare  that 
^anJpr'ofiialfe"^'''  ^f  various ' '  trusts ' '  or  similar  combinations, 
one-third  paid  no  dividends,  and  another 
third  paid  dividends  only  on  their  preferred  stock  (140  c). 
Notwithstanding  the  advantages  hoped  for  by  combina- 
tion, the  stocks  of  most  trusts  are,  thus  far,  held  in  very 
low  esteem.  This  is  largely  because  enormous  amounts  of 
them  were  issued  in  excess  of  the  actual  values  of  the 
properties  combined  in  the  trusts :  in  the  whiskey  trust, 
for  instance,  about  sevenfold.  A  very  large  share  of 
these  excessive  issues  of  stock  often  went  to  bankers, 
lawyers,  and  other  promoters,  for  their  services  in 
effecting  combinations.  The  great  business  depression 
of  1903-4  was  largely  due  to  people  who  supposed 
themselves  rich  in  these  stocks,  having  spent  more 
money  than  the  stocks  turned  out  to  be  worth. 

On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  trusts,  especially  the 

*  The  landlord  of  a  favorite  drummers'  hotel  told  the  author 
late  in  1900  that  he  had  not  noticed  any  difference  in  the  aggre- 
gate amount  of  commercial  travel,  despite  the  150,000  men  said 
to  have  been  thrown  out  by  the  formation  of  the  trusts. 


^  1^2  d]CoJu petition,  Monopoly,  Industrial  Trusts.      135 

older  ones  whose  stock  was  not  so  much  watered,  have 
been  enormously  profitable. 

The  portion  of  the  total  output  of  their  respective 
industries  which  has  been  controlled  by  the  trusts, 
has  varied  between  sixty  and  ninety  per  cent.  The 
control  of  even  sixty  per  cent,  enables  a  combination 
to  regulate  prices  pretty  effectually. 

Probably  the  best  brief  summary  of  this  important 
topic  is  contained  in  Professor' Seager's  "  Economics." 
152  (c).  Their  mon-  Inordinate  prices  in  a  trust  are  short- 
ml'seritslwT  sighted  for  two  reasons :  first ,  the  most  prof- 
cure,  itable   business    must  generally   be   done 

at  prices  low  enough  to  enlarge  custom;  and  second, 
the  only  policy  that  justifies  the  existence  of  a  trust, 
is  the  use  of  its  great  facilities  to  serve  the  public  at 
prices  that  defy  competition  from  smaller  concerns.  If 
that  is  hard  on  smaller  concerns,  they  can  join  the 
trust,  or  go  into  some  business  to  supply  new  con- 
veniences or  cheapen  old  ones.  Where  it  is  a  question 
of  the  public  being  served  well  and  cheaply,  it  will 
not  do  to  be  tender  about  the  interests  of  an  individual. 
It  is  not  meant  from  all  this  to  intimate  that,  in 
virtue  of  preventing  wasteful  competition  between  their 
members,  and  producing  by  cheap  processes,  the  trusts 
are  an  unmixed  good.  As  already  said,  they  are  in 
danger  of  becoming  monopolies,  just  as 
Wnii'doTs''nlt"^^'  ^s  an  individual  competitor  choking  off 
another:  and  moreover,  if  there  is  no  com- 
petitor to  force  the  trusts  to  keep  low  prices,  they  are 
sometimes  unwise  enough  to  keep  all  the  economies  of 
"the  great  industry"  for  their  own  benefit  until  they 
find  that  course  suicidal. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  has  not  a  man  a  right  to  set 
his  own  price  on  his  own  property?  If  not,  what 
becomes  of  property  rights?  If  one  man  or  one  cor- 
poration or  one  trust  has  wealth  enough  to  drive  out 
weak  competitors  and  get  hold  of  the  entire  supply 
of  any  comm.odity  or  facility,  is  it  not  fair  that  people 
who  want  it  should  pay  the  holder's  price?     Perhaps 


136  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§152^ 

they  should  if  they  let  a  monopoly  get  the  control, 
but  that  is  just  what  they  should  not  do. 

Moreover,  a  man  has  not  always  a  right  to  set  his 
own  price  on  his  own  property :  a  man  having  a  monopoly 

of  plenty  of  food  has  no  right  to  demand 
tights  Ko/aiways  ^  Starving  man's  fortune  for  enough  food 
j.^ci^u^d^e  monopoly      to  save  him.     There  is  a  limit,  then,  to 

property  "rights.  As  we  have  already 
agreed  more  than  once,- there  is  a  limit  to  all  rights — 
there  is  to  everything  we  can  conceive  of,  for  that 
matter:  the  state  has  a  right,  whenever  the  greatest 
good  of  the  greatest  number  requires  it,  to  take  a 
man's  property  or  labor  at  a  fair  price,  or  even  his 
life  at  no  price  at  all,  tho  it  usually  pensions  a  de- 
pendent survivor.  The  state,  then,  might  properly 
take  an  unjust  monopoly's  goods  by  eminent  domain, 
and  sell  them  to  the  people  at  reasonable  prices.     But 

154  State  Control.  "1^'^^^^  ^^^^  principle  is  right,  the  way  around 
is  long.  It  would  be  simpler  for  the  state 
to  compel  the  monopoly  to  sell  at  reasonable  prices,  or 
better  still,  wherever  the  state  can,  to  encourage  compe- 
tition. Laws  have  been  enacted  regulating  prices  of 
such  monopolies  as  railroads,  water  companies,  etc.,  and 
there  are  also  two  classes  of  what  are  generally  called 
anti-trust  laws — one  class  providing  that  persons  con- 
spiring to  unduly  raise  the  price  of  goods,  shall  be  liable 
to  the  same  penalties  as  persons  conspiring  to  defraud; 
the  other,  that  corporations  so  acting  shall  lose  their 
charters,  and  trusts  so  acting  shall  be  dissolved.  Per- 
haps these  laws  are  3^et  too  new  to  show  whether  there 
is  much  good  in  them.  So  far,  they  have  been  found 
very  hard  to  enforce:  partly  because  it  is  very  hard 
to  get  evidence  that  will  fasten  the  guilt  where  it 
belongs. 

154  (a).  By  Anti-  MonopoHes  are  against  the  common  law, 
Trust  Laws.  ^nd  in  1890  the  United  States  Congress  (as 

many  state  legislatures  have  done  before  and  since) 
reinforced  the  common  law  by  a  statute.  The  following 
remarks  on  it  in  the  Times  of  April  13,  1903,  throw 
much  light  on  the  subject — not  the  least,  on  the  diffi- 


§  154^]  Competition,  Monopoly,  Industrial  Trusts.      137 

culty  of  getting  advantages  out  of  such  laws.  The 
statute  declared 

"contracts  and  combinations  in  restraint  of  trade  or  com- 
merce among  the  states  to  be  unlawful.  .  .  .  Nobody  had 
any  idea,  not  even  its  framers,  that  it  would  be  used  against 
the  railroads.  .  .  .  Up  to  the  end  of  the  year  1901  there  had 
been  twenty-three  suits  brought  by  the  government  under 
that  Act.  Only  four  of  these  actions  attracted  general  public 
attention.  The  Knight  case  against  the  Sugar  Trust  resulted 
in  the  defeat  of  the  government,  the  Supreme  Court  holding 
that  production  was  not  commerce.  The  Trans-Missouri 
Freight  Association  and  the  Joint  Traffic  Association  were 
actual  combinations  to  fix  rates,  and  the  Supreme  Court  declared 
them  unlawful.  In  the  Addyston  Pipe  and  Steel  Company 
case,  a  particularly  vicious  conspiracy  in  restraint  of  trade 
was  broken  up  by  the  judgment  and.  decree  of  the  court.  Taking 
the  twenty-three  government  suits  together,  the  government 
has  lost  eleven  outright,  has  accomplished  nothing  in  two,  and 
has  won  ten.  Of  the  ten,  four  are  against  labor  unions  and 
strikers.  Of  the  remaining  six,  four  are  the  suits  above  men- 
tioned. Three  other  suits,  that  against  the  Northern  Securities 
just  decided,  the  suit  against  the  Beef  Trust,  and  the  suit 
against  the  Federal  Salt  Company,  have  been  brought  since 
the  beginning  of  the  year  1902.  This  makes  twenty-six  suits 
in  thirteen  years — two  a  year.  No  wonder  the  agitators  pro- 
claimed that  the  law  was  a  dead  letter  .  '.  .  the  anti-trust 
law  has  been  fished  up  from  its  condition  of  nocuous  or  innocu- 
ous desuetude,  under  which  actions  were  brought  at  the  rate 
of  two  a  year,  to  be  made  to-day  the  most  conspicuous  statute 
in  the  land.  .  .  .  It  is  to  be  added,  however — and  the  considera- 
tion is  an  important  one — that  President  Roosevelt's  provo- 
cations have  far  exceeded  those  to  which  his  predecessors  were 
subjected.  The  Northern  Securities  combination  was  quite 
the  most  flagrant,  bold  and  undisguised  defiance  of  the  law 
of  1890  which  the  country  has  witnessed.  The  Beef  Trust 
combination  was  also  one  peculiarly  offensive  to  the  popular 
sense  of  right,  a  sense  somewhat  sharpened,  no  doubt,  by  the 
high  prices  of  beef  which  prevailed  a  year  ago. 

"The  brilliant  success  of  the  proceedings  against  the  Northern 
Securities  Company  [a  corporation  formed  to  hold  the  stock 
of  several  railroad  companies,  and  so  do  away  with  competi- 
tion between  them.  The  government  dissolved  the  corporation. 
It  is  not  proved,  however,  that  the  result  cannot  be  accom- 
plished in  other  ways],  it  is  hoped  in  some  quarters  and  feared 
in  others,  will  inspire  the  Administration  to  an  enthusiastic 
pursuit  of  other  offending  corporations.  There  are  plenty  of 
therr^.  Not  only  the  coal-carrying  roads,  but  corporations  like 
the  New  Haven  Road,  with  its  control  of  the  Sound  steamboat 
lines;   the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  which  in  one  way  or  another 


138  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§154^ 

controls  the  Reading,  the  New  Jersey  Central,  and  the  Balti- 
more and  Ohio;  the  Lake  Shore,  which  controls  the  "Nickel 
Plate",  and  dozens  of  other  railroad  systems,  small  and  great, 
lie  open  to  the  assault  of  the  Attorney-General  under  the  ex- 
ceedingly broad  principles  of  the  Northern  Securities  decision. 
There  is  no  occasion  to  prove  that  they  do  restrain  trade  or 
fix  unreasonable  rates.  The  court  says  that  is  not  the  question; 
and  the  Supreme  Court  itself  has  ruled  that  the  possession  of 
the  power  to  do  the  unlawful  acts  is  all  that  it  is  necessary  to 
prove." 

The  law  has  been  invoked  several  times  since  the 
quoted  editorial  was'  written,  especially  regarding  ice 
trusts,  meat  trusts,  and  railroad  rebates,  with  the 
punishment  of  some  offenders,  and  probably  the  dis- 
couragement of  some  abuses  into  which,  without  the 
law,  the  trusts  both  of  capital  and  labor  would  have 
ventured.  All  newspaper  readers  know  the  details :  so 
it  is  hardly  worth  while  to  state  them  here.  More- 
over, Congress  has  passed  the  Railroad  Rate  Bill,  whose 
efficacy  is  yet  to  be  tested,  and  the  Meat  Inspection  Bill. 

., . ,. ,  „    .^  ,  While  in  a  case  that  has  come  under 

154  (^W-  Capital  ,  ,     -  .J.  J.     ^ 

Trusts  and  Labor     my  knowledge,  a  number  of  manufacturers 

^''"^^^-  of  exceptional  standing  were  advised  by 

their  counsel  not  to  agree  on  rates  and  prices,  for 
fear  they  would  be  haled  into  court  for  violating  the 
anti-trust  law,  the  Sherman  Interstate  Act,  and  the 
Donnelly  Act,  the  members  of  the  trades-unions  all 
over  the  country  are  agreeing  to  keep  up  prices,  with- 
out anybody  paying  any  attention  to  the  illegality 
of  it;  and  all  this  despite  the  laboring  man's  standard 
claim  that  he,  of  all  men,  is  the  constant  victim  of 
injustice! 

So  far  as  monopolies  are  controlled,  as  they  nearly  all 
are,  by  corporations,  the  state  has  a  right  to  regulate 
them,  because  the  corporations  are  made  by  the  state. 
When  the  state  confers  on  a  corporation  the  privileges  of 
limited  liability,  the  right  to  sue  and  be  sued  as  a  unit, 
and  the  right  of  continuous  association  of  property  in- 
terests in  spite  of  the  death  of  a  member,  the  state  has  a 
right,  of  course,  to  name  the  conditions  on  which  it 
confers  the  benefits — the  duties  which  must  attach  to 


§  r54<?]    Competition,  Monopoly,  Industrial  Trusts.     139 

the  rights — and  prominent  among  these  conditions,  of 
course,  are  defences  against  misuse  of  monopoly  privi- 
leges. 

\i/^  (c).  By  fixing  Probably  the  most  frequent  instance  of 
'"''''**•  the  state  thus  making  wise  conditions,  is 

the  regulation  of  railroad  rates — street-car  fares  in 
cities,  mileage  rates  on  steam  roads,  and  freight  rates 
between  points  where  there  are  not  competing  roads. 
It  might  be  wiser  to  force  the  roads  to  keep  their  prices 
down,  by  setting  a  limit  to  the  profits  they  shall  divide: 
for  an  arbitrary  price  might  be  less  than  they  could 
continue  business  at.  But  a  danger  in  limiting  profits, 
is  that  the  roads  would  prefer  to  earn  them  by  a  small 
and  easy  business  at  high  prices,  rather  than  a  larger  and 
more  difficult  business  at  low  prices;  whereas,  if  they  are 
permitted  to  make  all  they  can,  they  may  often  widen 
business  by  rates  even  lower  than  those  which  would 
give  them  the  profit  arbitrarily  fixed  for  them.  A 
road  might  make  as  much  money  by  running  a  few 
trains  at  a  dollar  a  head,  as  by  running  more  at  seventy- 
five  cents,  and  prefer  the  smaller  trouble  and  wear  of 
the  few  trains  at  a  dollar.  Yet  it  might  make  a  great 
deal  more  money  by  running  still  more  trains  at  fifty 
cents,  but  be  restrained  because  not  permitted  to  earn 
more  than  it  could  at  a  dollar. 

154  w.  Byemi-  One  of  the  best  instances  of  wise  state 
nent  domain.  interference  with  monopoly  abuses,  by 
direct  exercise  of  eminent  domain,  is  at  Niagara  Falls. 
The  neighborhood  used  to  be  one  of  the  plague-spots  of 
the  earth — covered  with  unsightly  and  ill-arranged 
structures,  and  infested  by  extortionate  hackmen  and 
cheating  fakirs  of  all  sorts.  The  state  took  the  land 
by  eminent  domain,  made  a  beautiful  park  of  it,  and 
has  everything  well  managed  at  reasonable  prices. 
154  (e)  Dan  er  of  ^^^  such  State  interferences  may  become 
government  tyrannical    and    foolish.     Corrupt    politi- 

tyranny.  cians  may  interfere  to  extort  blackmail, 

and  at  best  the  state  cannot  know  all  sorts  of  business, 
and  should  be  very  slow  to  interfere  with,  or  itself 
conduct,  any. 


140  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  155 

,,^  r^  ,  ,      ,       The  effect  of  the  crreat  corporations  and 

155.  Effect  of  great     ,         ,  i-i.--  ij-  1 
aggregations  of       trusts    on    legislation   IS    much    discussea. 

capital  on  Legis-      They  can  afford  to  bribe  more  than  smaller 

private  concerns  could,  and  get  all  sorts  of 

"protective"  laws   to  shut  off  foreign  competition,  so 

that  they  can  impose  upon  the  public  the  highest  rates 

the  public  will  pay;   and  they   can   often  make  most 

money  by  selling  to  a  few  at  high  prices,  and  forcing  the 

many    to    go    without.     The   Sugar  Trust  is  generally 

believed  to  have  bought  three  senators  of  the  United 

States   in   the    Fifty-second    Congress,    and   prevented 

the  passage  of  a  reformed  tariff  bill  which  that  Congress 

was  specially  elected  to  pass.     Tho  that  Congress  did 

pass   a   reformed   tariff  bill,   it  was   a   very   lame   and 

doubtful  one,  largely  owing  to  the  obstruction  of  the 

suspected    senators.     The    reform    did    not    reach    the 

sugar. 

156.  Sociaiism  as  It  has  been  urged  that  we  could  get  rid 
a  remedy  of  the  corruption  if  the  state  itself  ran 
all  the  industries — that  we  could  get  rid  of  all  the  trusts 
by  making  the  state  itself  a  trust  that  should  include 
them  all,  as  proposed  by  Mr.  Bellamy;  and  one  argument 
is  that  then  there  would  be  no  one  interested  to  buy 
votes.  But  examined,  this  is  simply  a  claim  that  it 
would  be  better  if  the  politicians  were  running  the 
industries  themselves:  so  they  could  vote  to  favor 
their  pets  without  being  bought — so  that  instead  of 
having  the  corruption  funds  of  the  corporations  and 
trusts  ladled  out  to  them  as  now,  they  would  hold  the 
ladle  themselves.  Tho  nominally  the  politicians  would 
be  working  the  industries  for  the  state,  and  not  for 
themselves,  we  have  seen  enough  of  the  way  they  are 
apt  to  "work  for  the  state  and  not  for  themselves". 
Moreover,  business  will  be  managed  much  better  if 
the  manager  is  working  for  his  own  benefit,  and  ac- 
cording to  his  own  ideas,  than  if  he  is  working  for  the 
state,  and  according  to  its  own  ideas — even  if  there 
were  any  way  of  keeping  the  state's  ideas  fixed.  But, 
it  is  urged,  the  manager  of  a  corporation  or  a  trust 


§157]    Competition,  Monopoly,  Industrial  Trusts.       141 

is  not  generally  working  for  himself;    yet  he  generally 
owns  a  large  share,  while  if  his  concern  belonged  to  the 
government,  he  would  not  own  a  millionth  part. 
157,  The  only  Ths  only  effective  policy,  then,  against 

real  remedies.  the  corruption  of  legislatures  by  monopo- 
lies, seems  to  be  to  do  our  best  to  see  that  only  incor- 
ruptible men  are  elected  to  office,  to  perfect  our  laws, 
and  to  educate  people  so  that  there  will  be  more 
chance  of  the  corporations  and  trusts  being  managed 
by  men  who  will  develop  the  good  side  for  the  benefit 
of  the  community  as  well  as  of  themselves.  The  state 
must  continue  to  make  corporations  and  permit  trusts 
in  some  form,  while  at  the  same  time  it  must  make  laws 
to  protect  people  from  them;  and  it  must  do  this  for 
the  same  reasons  that  it  encourages  the  rearing  of 
citizens,  when  it  has  to  make  laws  to  protect  itself 
against  bad  ones — corporations  and  trvists  have  their 
good  sides  just  as  people  have. 

Probably  the  competition  in  drumming  and  advertising 
has  done  as  much  as  anything  else  to  lead  to  the  forma- 
tion of  the  trusts.  *  The  success  of  "publicity"  in  some 
businesses  peculiarly  responsive  to  it,  has  recently  led  to 
a  wasteful  mania  for  it,  and  extravagant  efforts  of  dealers 
to  outdo  each  other  in  it,  even  regarding  things,  like 
books,  of  inevitably  limited  demand,  and  touching  which 
people  make  up  their  own  minds,  more  or  less  under 
expert  advice.  Regarding  this  waste  and  some  others, 
Professor  Cooley  indicates  a  remedial  influence  outside 
of  the  trusts.  He  says  *  that  competition  grows  with 
capital  and  industrial  freedom,  and  that  it  declines  as 
intelligence  and  morality  on  the  part  of  the  buyer  grow. 
These  conditions  of  growth  are  plain,  on  a  little  reflec- 
tion, but  the  reasons  for  decline  may  justify  a  little 
explanation.  When  a  man  knows  good  from  bad, 
and  follows  the  good  when  he  sees  it,  he  will  be  apt 
to  make  up  his  own  mind,  and  it  is  therefore  a  com- 
parative waste  to  send  a  drummer  or  a  tempting  adver- 

*  In  his  remarkable  pamphlet  on  Competition,  published  by 
the  American  Economic  Association. 


142 


The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  i57 


tisement  after  him.  Moreover,  and  doubly  important, 
if  he  is  an  honest  man  in  a  position  of  trust,  hke  that 
of  a  commissioner  of  pubHc  works  or  education,  he 
is  not  going  to  choose  subordinates  or"  material  on  ac- 
count of  anybody's  "pull". 

Another  hopeful  influence  that  seems  likely  to  promote 
the  advantages  and  suppress  the  disadvantages  of  com- 
petition in  the  future,  is  the  growing  recognition  of 
broad  self-interest  and  of  civic  responsibihty.  Already 
there  is  here  and  there  a  man  at  the  head  of  a  great 
combination  who,  hke  Pullman  or  Wanamaker,  amid 
all  the  errors  of  the  struggle,  shows  some  realization 
that  the  best  profit  hes  in  serving  the  public  well  and 
cheaply,  and  has  some  sense  of  duty  to  his  fellow 
men. 

157  (a).  An  iiius-  Probably  there  is  justification — double 
tration.  justification  as  it  recalls  the  bright  exam- 

ple of  a  good  man,  for  a  more  specific  illustration  that 
success  is  not  dependent  on  the  kind  of  competition 
that  excludes  human  sympathy.  'I  have  the  best 
occasion  to  know  that  some  forty  years  ago,  a  man 
very  young  in  the  publishing  business  had  occasion 
to  call,  on  some  purely  commercial  matter,  on  the 
late  Mr.  Charles  Scribner,  the  founder  of  the  great 
house,  to  whom  the  young  man  was  barely  known  by 
name.  As  the  visitor  was  about  leaving,  Mr.  Scribner 
said:  "When  I  see  a  young  man  beginning  business, 
it  makes  me  recall  my  perplexities  when  I  began. 
It  would  have  been  everything  to  me  if  I  could  have 
taken  them  to  some  more  experienced  man.  I  should 
be  very  glad  if  you  care  to  bring  yours  freely  to  me." 
There  has  never  been  any  indication  that  the  great 
business  founded  in  that  spirit  is  any  the  worse  for 
it,  while  the  kind  suggestion  could  have  brought 
nothing  but  good  to  the  "  competing "(?)  business. 
Certainly  if  that  spirit  actuated  all  the  members  of 
each  trade,  the  world  would  be  a  great  deal  happier — 
and  richer:  the  money — or  let  us  say  the  force,  of 
which  money  is  only  the  index — now  wasted  in  com- 


§  157^]  Competition,  Monopoly,  Industrial  Trusts.     143 

petition,  would  be  saved  for  making  new  things  or 
cheapening  old  ones.  But  how  to  bring  about  that 
ideal  state  of  affairs?  Well,  the  persons  most  imme- 
diately at  hand  to  begin,  are,  patient  reader,  you  and  I. 
Of  course,  in  courtesy,   I   yield  you  the   precedence. 


CHAPTER  XL 

RIGHTS    IN    NATURAL  .MONOPOLIES. 

,,„  o      n.-  There  is  a  class  of  monopolies  which  must 

158.  Somethings       .        ^.     .  ^  t^     .  ,. 

are  inevitably         in  their  very  nature  remain  monopolies, 

monopolies,  -^  gp-^^  ^^  ^^^  ^^  ^^^  ^^^ 

A  street  railroad  usually  remains  a  monopoly  becauss 
not  more  than  one  can  ordinarily  be  laid  in  a  street.  It 
is  generally  the  same  with  a  city's  water-supply  and 
gas-supply,  and  even  its  sewerage,  connections  with 
which  are  actually  sold  in  some  places.  Perhaps,  too, 
it  would  not  be  straining  language  to  say  that  in  some 
industries,  the  first  factory  built  is  a  natural  monopoly, 
because  while  there  may  be  demand  enough  to  support 
that  one,  even  at  a  very  great  profit,  there  may  not  be 
demand  enough  to  justify  building  another. 

And  such  city  works  and  factories  are  not  the  only 
things  which  are  naturally  monopolies.  Nearly  all  roads, 
bridges  and  ferries  are,  and  so  are  natural  objects  which 
cannot  be  duplicated — such  as  extraordinary  mines  and 
springs,  and  picturesque  works  of  Nature  like  Niagara 
and  the  Yellowstone. 

158  ca;  But  the  Some  people  even  go  so  far  as  to  think 

earth  not  one  of  that  there  is  a  natural  monopoly  a  great 
*''^'"'  deal  bigger  than  all  the  things  we  have 

named  put  together — namely,  the  entire  land  of  the 
earth.  But  it  is  impossible  to  see  why.  Any  one  piece 
of  land  is  a  monopoly:  but  so  is  any  one  piece  of  pork, 
and  the  land  in  any  single  locality  may  be  "cornered", 
as  pork  or  lumber  or  wool  or  anything  else  may;  but 
land  generally,  cannot  be  a  monopoly,  so  long  as  no  one 

144 


§  i6oJ  Rights  in  Natural  Monopolies.  145 

party  owns  all  of  it,  and  people  are  competing  with  each 

other  in  selling  it,  any  more  than  anything  else  that  is 

generally  dealt  in  can  be  a  monopoly.     Yet  there  are 

thousands  of  people,  and  some  of  them  very  good  people, 

who  actually  think  that  all  the  inequalities  in  the  lot 

of  man  arise  from  land  being  a  monopoly,  and  that  the 

inequalities  would  be  removed  if  people  paid  rent  to 

the  state  instead  of  to  landlords  (66). 

icn  Hiu   D  •!     J        But  to  return  to  things  which  are  natural 

159.  Why  Railroads  ,.  ,  °  ,  , 

are  apt  to  be  mon-    monopolies :   between  two  places  there  can 

°P°"^^-  be  several  railroads,  why  then  is  one  apt 

to  be  a  monopoly?  Because  the  first  one  laid  out  is  apt 
to  be  on  the  best  route,  and  there  is  seldom  any  other 
route  good  enough  to  compete  with  it.  Another 
prominent  reason  is  that  the  travel  may  be  enough  to 
pay  enormous  profits  on  one  road,  without  being  enough 
to  justify  building  another. 

159  (a)  Why  theu  ^  railroad  cannot  be  built  without  gov- 
need  government  emment  authority,  bccausc  in  the  country, 
onza  ion,  ^^  coursc  nobody  can  take  land  for  a  road 
without  government  authority  (78),  while  in  a  city 
it  would  not  do  to  have  anybody  who  felt  like  it, 
take  possession  of  a  street  for  a  railroad.  Some  streets 
would  soon  be  so  full  of  tracks  as  to  be  destroyed  for 
other  purposes,  and  few  streets  would  be  left  free  from 
them.     Moreover,  as  the  right   to  build   a   railroad  is 

valuable,  the  city  ought  to  be  paid  for  it 
iay/oP /"""*'"'""' by  those  who  occupy  the  streets  for  the 

purpose.     The   right   is   really   a   lease   of 
the  streets,  and  generally  a  salable  one. 
159  re;.  So  «//f /I  The  rights  to  supply  light,  water,  etc., 

other  facilities.  ^l^-^^  ^q  coutrol  most  othcr  such  things,  are 
in  the  nature  of  monopolies,  and  of  course  rights  to  use 
the  streets  for  such  purposes  are  virtually  leases  too. 

The  rights  to  control  these  natural  monopolies  are 
called  Franchises. 

While  the  community  can  sell  franchises 
America''being  gen-  to  corporations  or  individuals,  in  Europe 
r^th^e  ^otitkians     ^^®  community  generally  either   uses  the 

franchises  itself,  or  leases  them   at  great 


146  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  160 

advantage;  but  in  America,  until  very  lately,  it  has 
generally  let  the  politicians  and  their  friends  make  up 
private  corporations  and  settle  dov/n  on  the  franchises 
without  any  return  whatever  to  the  community. 
This  has  been  permitted  because  people  are  generally 
too  lazy,  or  too  engrossed  in  their  own  affairs,  or  too 
stupid,  to  take  care  of  their  public  rights — because,  in 
short,  they  lack  political  ability — which  of  course  in- 
cludes political  virtue,  just  as  (despite  a  few  conspicuous 
exceptions  to  the  contrary)  business  ability  includes 
business  virtue.  If  the  people  had  enough  political 
virtue  or  ability  to  take  care  of  their  own  interests, 
they  could  manage  their  franchises  through  their  own 
officers.  Yet  it  might  be  just  as  wise  under  any  circum- 
stances to  sell  rights  to  do  part  of  the  work,  as  it  is 
for  other  corporations  to  do  the  same;  for  instance,  the 
railroads  often  sell  rights  to  run  palace-  and  dining-cars, 
and  to  supply  reading-matter  on  trains. 

As  a  rule,  when  a  community  wishes  to  get  a  profit  from 
its  franchises,  it  is  best  not  to  sell  them  outright  once 
for  all,  but  to  lease  them,  and  only  for  terms  of  years: 

because,  as  the  city  grows,  the  franchises 
loid  o^uSt.°* ''^    become  more  fruitful.     As  an  instance  of 

the  value  of  such  rights,  the  city  of  Balti- 
more has  unusually  good  parks,  and  unusually  many  of 
them,  which  are  paid  for  and  kept  up  by  a  portion  of 
the  receipts  of  the  street  railroads.  Some  other  Ameri- 
can cities  are  beginning  to  get  revenues  from  their  street 
railways  and  most  European  cities  which  do  not  run 
their  own,  derive  large  revenues  from  the  companies 
which  lease  the  franchises. 

.(.r,  u        .     ,  Now  let  us  look  back  of  this  little  dis- 

162,  How  natural  .            ^ 

Mononolies  become  cussion  ot  natural  monopolies,  to  see  how 

Personal  Property,.  ^^^  ^^  ^^^^  ^^^^  justified  in  treating  rights 

in  natural  monopolies  as  rights  of  property.  So  far  we 
have  been  principally  concerned  in  relation  to  property 
rights,  with  their  creation  by  the  development  of  natural 
resources  through  manufactures  and  transportation, 
and  with  the  determination  of  what  shares  of  the  result 
should  go  to  the  Laborer,  the  Capitalist  and  the  Enter- 


§  162]  Rights  in  Natural  Monopolies.  147 

priser.  The  landlord  is  of  course  one  of  the  capitalists. 
We  came  to  treat  monopolies  and  trusts  in  these  con- 
nections, because  they  are  aggregations  of  capital.  It 
is  more  than  a  mere  metaphor  to  regard  even  natural 
monopolies  in  the  same  way.  Railroads,  city  water- 
supplies,  etc.,  are  plainly  aggregations  of  capital,  but 
each  of  them  is  both  an  artificial  and  a  natural  monopoly ; 
a  mine  is  perhaps  more  distinctly  a  natural  one.  And 
yet  as  soon  as  any  one  of  these  natural  monopolies,  or 
even  a  natural  curiosity  or  beauty  attracting  admission- 
fees,  begins  to  pay  income,  it  becomes  capital,  and 
therefore  its  shares  become  personal  property. 

We  will  consider  these  matters  more  at  length  when 
we  come  to  government's  Promotion  of  Convenience. 
Now  let  us  go  on  to  the  Law  of  Personal  Property. 


CHAPTER  XII.  ^ 

THE    LAW   OF    RIGHTS    IN    PERSONAL    PROPERTY. 

We  saw  (82)  that  the  ownership  of  personal  property 
is  generally  transferred  by  mere  delivery.  It  is  seldom 
registered,  like  that  of  land,  because  in  most  cases  the 
perishable  and  transferable  nature  of 
Iweerf'Law^o'f  plr*-^"  personal  property  would  make  registry 
spnal  Property  and    merelv  a  nuisancc ;    but  its  ownership  is 

that  of  Land,  /.  -,11  ■.  ^ 

sometimes  registered  when  it  passes  out 
of  the  owner's  possession.  For  instance,  if  goods  are 
163  (a).  Personal  P^^  ^^  ^  pubHc  warehousc  or  given  to  an 
property  seldom  express  or  freight  company,  or  money  is 
registered.  -^^^^  ^^  dcposit,  the  article  is  entered  in 

a  book,  and  a  receipt  of  some  kind  is  generally  given. 
,„,,,,  ,       ,    .        Bonds  are  often  registered  in  the  owner's 

\Q3(b).  Important  ■,  rr-  r    .  ■,  -  ■ 

hinds  passed  by  name  at  the  oince  of  the  company  issuing 
en  orsement.  them,  and  stocks  always  are,  tho  upon 
being  issued,  they  may  be  endorsed  in  blank,  and  pass 
through  many  hands  before  being  registered  again. 

"Endorsed"  means  literally  "on-backed",  and  usu- 
ally refers  to  writing  one's  name  on  the  back  of  a  paper 
entitling  the  writer  to  some  sort  of  personal  property. 
Endorsing  is  generally  in  token  that  the  writer  parts 
with  the  right  to  the  value  stated  on  the  face  of  the 
paper,  in  favor  of  whoever  may  thereafter  hold  the 
paper,  or  of  some  person  named  in  the  endorsement. 

If  the  endorsement  is  in  favor  of  a  particular  person 
named,  the  latter  can  pass  the  value  on,  by  himself 
writing  a  second  endorsement.  The  principal  kinds 
of  papers  entitling  somebody  to  receive  value,  of  which 

148 


§  i6^c]  The  Law  of  Rights  in  Personal  Property.  149 

the  value  is  passed  on  through  endorsement,  are  bank 
checks,  promissory  notes,  stocks,  bonds  and  warehouse 
receipts  for  many  kinds  of  merchandise. 

As  a  rule,  if  an  endorser  has  prompt  legal  notice  that 
the  signer  of  the  paper  fails  to  make  it  good,  he  is 
responsible  that  any  later  holder  shall  receive  what  is 
called  for  on  the  face  of  the  paper,  but  not  in  the  case 
of  stocks  and  bonds.  On  them,  an  endorsement  is 
merely  an  authorization  to  the  company  to  register  the 
certificate  in  a  new  name. 

When  an  endorser  becomes  responsible,  it  is  on  the 
theory  that  he  has  received  an  equivalent  from  the  later 
holder,  and  therefore  is  responsible  to  him  for  the  value 
for  which  that  equivalent  was  given;  the  same  theory 
follows  each  transfer  of  the  document.  But  in  fact,  an 
endorser  does  not  always  receive  an  equivalent,  unless 
friendship  or  favor  is  to  be  so  considered :  for  men  often 
endorse  checks  and  promissory  notes,  and  make  them- 
selves responsible  for  their  payment,  to  enable  their 
makers  to  use  them  where  their  credit  would  not  other- 
wise enable  them  to. 

With   three   exceptions  (87),  one  has   a 

\Q2(c).  Can  take         •    ux   ^      j.    i  '  1         \. 

one-sown  whet-ever  Tight  to  .take  One  s  property  wherever  one 

^cas"et'byfJ"c!'"^^  ^^^^  i*'  ^^  ^®  ^^^  ^°  s°  without  violence : 
otherwise  the  rule  is  about  the  same  as 
in  real  estate. 

If  a  robber  has  put  property  in  another  person's 
house,  the  ovvner  must  not  break  in  or  fight  his  way  to  it. 
Rather  than  have  the  peace  disturbed,  the  law  prefers 
that  he  should  stand  still  and  risk  the  robber's  carrying 
the  property  to  a  place  of  concealment,  on  the  chances 
of  preventing  that  in  some  other  way.  If  somebody 
goes  into  the  owner's  house  for  it,  and  has  it  and  refuses 
to  give  it  up  at  the  ov/ner's  demand,  it  is  then  the  duty 
of  any  citizen  satisfied  that  he  has  stolen  it,  to  arrest 
him,  as  it  is  to  arrest  anybody  he  finds  committing 
a   crime. 

If  the  robber  resists,  any  citizen  arresting  is  armed 
with  the  authority  of  the  law,  and  can  use  any  force 
Iiecessary.     True,  the  citizen  could  not  use  any  force 


150  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  163  c 

necessary  to  drive  a  man  off  from  his  land  (81  b),  but 
his  being  there  was  not  a  crime.  The  citizen  has  the 
duty  and  the  power  to  arrest  only  in  cases  of  crime — 
such  as  murder,  arson,  burglary  or  theft. 

The  exceptions  already  alluded  to,  where  a  person 
cannot  peaceably  take  his  own  property  wherever  he 
sees  it,  are,  in  a  sense,  not  exceptions,  but  rather 
instances  (the  only  ones)  where  a  thing 
^o^JomehindYoarl'  may  peacefully  cease  to  be  one's  property 
ne '/"/ct""^''""^  without  one's  receiving  a  satisfactory 
equivalent,  or  at  least  (as  in  the  case  of 
taxes  or  eminent  domain)  one  declared  satisfactory 
by  the  law.  These  exceptional  instances  are  money 
and  "negotiable  paper" — bank  checks,  promissory 
notes  and  bills  of  exchange.  If  theft  or  accident  puts 
one  of  them  in  wrong  hands,  and  they  transfer  it  for 
good  value  to  a  holder  innocent  of  any  wrong  or  knowl- 
edge of  wrong  regarding  it,  the  innocent  holder  can 
recover  its  value  from  all  parties  who  would  be  liable 
if  it  had  to  come  to  him  regularly.  Of  course  this  is 
hard  on  honest  makers  and  endorsers  of  such  paper, 
who  lose  it,  or  from  whom  it  is  stolen,  but  it  would  be 
harder  on  the  community  if  all  business  had  to  wait 
for  the  history  of  every  piece  of  commercial  paper  to 
be  investigated,  as  it  has  to  wait  for  real-estate  titles 
to  be  investigated.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  easy 
transfer  of  rights  in  commercial  paper  is  seldom  hard 
on  anybody:  for  the  result  of  the  law  is  that  people 
take  such  good  care  of  their  paper  that  it  is  seldom 
lost   or  stolen. 

While  personal  property  can  be  loaned  or  hired  out 
in  an  infinite  number  of  ways,  ownership  of  it  is  not 
considered  as  enduring  enough  to  be  popularly  called 
an  "estate",  as  in  land;  yet  there  can  be  a  life  estate 
in  some  kinds  of  personal  property,  perhaps  in  any 
kind,  notably  in  libraries  and  works  of  art. 

Like  land,  however,  it  can  be  mortgaged. 
^mlnqaq^" wHho'it  Such  a  mortgage  is  called  a  chattel  mort- 
registtti  if  in  mart-  ^Q^cTQ     and    unlcss    the    mortgagee    takes 

gagees  possession.  ofc>»_  && 

possession,  the  mortgage,  like  a  real-estate 


§  165]      The  Law  of  Rights  in  Personal  Property.         151 

mortgage,  is    not   good    against   creditors    unless   it   is 
recorded. 

The  difference  between  a  chattel  mort- 
^  ^^'"         gage  and  a  pledge,  is  that  a  pledge  is  always 
accompanied  with  possession  of  the  chattel  by  the  per- 
son making  the  loan;    a  chattel  mortgage,  if  registered, 
need  not  be. 

There  are  millions  of  times  as  many  agreements  made 
regarding  personal  property  as  regarding  land,  for 
personal  property  is  constantly  traded,  from  the  cand}^- 
shops  to  the  stock-exchanges,  by  people  who  never  have 
any  land,  and  even  professional  dealers  in  land,  have 
to  deal  many  times  as  often  in  personal  property,  in 
connection  with  the  ordinary  requirements  of  life 
.cc  D        1         These    facts    of    course    make    personal 

165.  Personal  oron-  r-    i  i        r    /-> 

erty  the  great  field    property  the  great  held  01  Contract:    so 
of  contract.  what  time  we  can  give  to  details  of  the  law 

of  personal  property  can  best  be  used  incidentally  to  our 
consideration  of  Contract. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


CONTRACT. 

As  an  Element  in  Civilization. 

166,  Difference  We  have  seen  that  men  start  with  a  right 
HgEnd°Property  to  appropriate  things  from  Nature,  to 
rights.  labor  on  them,  and  to  keep  the  results. 
But  rights  to  prevent  a  person  taking  or  holding  an- 
other's property  are  merely  rights  to  prohibit  something. 
Rights  to  demand  something — demand  another's  things 
or  labor,  plainly  can  arise  only  by  giving  or  promising 
something  in  return. 

The  modern  state  protects  each  party  in  his  right  to 
demand  fulfilment  from,  the  other. 

167.  Contract  '^h^  rights  arising  from  such  agreements 
agreement,  bargain,  are  technically  called  Rights  under  Con- 
tract. Contract  means  nearly  the  same  thing  as 
agreement.  But  etymologically,  agreement  means 
something  to  the  satisfaction  of  both  parties,  while 
contract  means  merely  drawn  together,  or  perhaps 
bound  together,  as  we  often  say  when  a  bargain  is  under 
way,  that  the  people  are  trying  to  "get  together". 
There  is  still  a  third  word  for  that  same  things — bargain. 
But  the  word  "contract"  having  been  more  associated 
with  law,  has  been  kept  more  strictly  to  its  early 
meaning;  for  instance,  it  seldom  has  anything  to  do 
with  the  profitableness  of  an  agreement,  wdiile  "bargain  " 
is  often  used  to  mean  merely  a  profitable  transaction. 
A  good  contract  generally  means  one  that  legally  binds 

152 


§  169]       Contract  as  an  Element  in  Civilization.  153 

the  parties,  while  a  good  bargain  means  rather  one  that 
is  profitable  to  one  side  or  both.  Yet  each  word  is 
used  in  both  senses.  Bargain,  tho,  is  never  used  in  a 
general  sense  as  one  of  the  great  foundation-stones  of 
civilization,  as  we  shall  see  that  Contract  is.  People 
of  low  intelligence  or  low  morality  or  both,  sometimes 
break  contracts,  on  the  ground  that  they  do  not  yield 
good  bargains. 

,„o  „   ,    ,  A  slave  or  serf  cannot  make  any  con- 

168.  Contract  nos-    ^        ^      ,  ,       j.    ,  ,  -^   .     , 

sibieoniy  tothe       tracts  to  Speak  of,  because  he  cannot  de- 

^''^®'  pend  on  keeping  any ;  he  can  only  do  what 

his  master  says.     This  affects  his  rights  to  property: 

for,  as  whatever  he  does  is  under  his  master's  orders, 

his  master  takes  the  profit  or  bears  the  loss.     If  there 

is  a  loss — if  crops  turn  out  badl}^  for  instance,   the 

master  is  supposed  to  take  care  of  the  slave  under  all 

circumstances. 

Whether  the  system  is  good  or  bad,  depends  upon 
what  it  is  compared  with.  Slavery  would  not  be  good 
in  a  civilized  community ;  but  savages  are  so  much  like 
children  that,  if  left  to  themselves,  they  would  be  more 
apt  to  starve,  and  rob  and  kill  each  other,  than  if  an 
able  man  had  absolute  control  to  keep  them  in  some 
sort  of  order,  and  tell  them  what  to  do. 

All  societies  that  have  reached  civilization,  have  had 
to  pass  through  conditions  of  slavery,  serfdom  and 
feudalage. 

Many  societies  have  long  stood  still,  like  those  of 
India  and  China — some  until  they  could  stand  no  longer, 
and  were  overcome  or  died  out.  Nothing  higher  than  a 
vegetable  can  stand  still  and  flourish — a  society,  a  busi- 
ness, a  human  being,  or  even  a  beast,  must  progress — 
at  least  enough  for  exercise,  or  it  will  decay.  It  is  like 
a  person  on  a  bicycle — he  must  move  or  come  down. 
,.„  ^   ,    ^  The  way  to  teach  a  man  to  take  care  of 

169,  Contract  an       ,  .  ,r     •      ,       i  i  •         .       ,    i  r 

education  in  free-     himself,  IS  to  leave  him  to  take  care  01 
^°"^'  himself,    just    so    far   as    safety   permits. 

Obviously,  a  man  cannot  get  ahead  unless  he  can  dis- 
pose of  his  own  labor,  and  in  the  present  state  of  man- 


154  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  169 

kind,  he  cannot  get  ahead  very  far,  in  property  at 
least,  unless  he  can  dispose  of  the  labor  of  others. 
This  does  not  mean  unless  he  can  enslave  others:  free- 
men cooperate  with  a  man  of  true  ability  to  their  own 
good,  as  well  as  to  his. 

The  difference  between  the  modern  guide  of  labor 
and  the  slaveholder,  is  that  the  slaveholder,  even  tho 
he  be  incapable  and  unable  or  unwilling  to  take  good 

170.  Under  Con-  care  of  his  slaves,  can  still  force  them 
tract,  only  Able       ^q  ^ork  for  him.     The  modem  emplover 

employers  can  ,  .        ,    -  ^  i      V 

secure  Labor.  cannot    lorce    his  .  laborer    to    work    for 

him,  because  the  modem  laborer,  especially  with  mod- 
em facilities  of  travel,  can  contract  where  he  pleases. 
He  is  not  shut  up  on  his  master's  place,  as  the  churls 
and  the  villeins  of  England  and  the  serfs  of»  Russia 
and  slaves  of  America  were.  The  civilized  laborer's 
power  to  contract,  makes  it  necessary  that  his  em- 
ployer should  treat  him  both  well  and  ably.  Therefore 
the  modem  employer  must  be  really  able — capable  of 
guiding  his  men  well,  and  deserving  his  position,  or  com- 
petition will  get  his  men  away  from  him.  And  it  is 
becoming  m.ore  the  case  every  day,  that  employers 
have  to  compete  with  each  other  to  get  the  best  labor; 
and  he  who  best  guides  his  labor,  and  cares  for  it  so  as 
to  make  it  most  vigorous,  intelligent  and  cheerful,  gen- 
erally comes  out  ahead  in  the  competition,  and  makes 
most  money. 

The  scientific  name  for  the  primitive  state  of  affairs 
where  most  men  were  obliged  to  stand  still  just  where 
they  were  bom,  is  status  (the  Latin  word  for  standing). 
One  reflecting  upon  the  condition  is  tempted  to  suggest 
the  English  expression  "stick-in-the-mud".     The  condi- 

171.  Status  versus  tion  where  men  can  dispose  of  themselves 
Contract.  and  their  property  as  they  please,  is  called 
the  condition  of  Contract.  Wherever  status,  or  "stand- 
ing", is  the  condition,  if  a  man  is  born  a  ruler,  important 
or  petty,  he  stays  one;  if  he  is  born  a  serf  or  peasant, 
he  stays  one. 

In  quite  primitive  societies,  there  are  examples,  such 
as  Mahomet   and   Genghis   Khan,   of  people  changing 


§  172]      Contract  as  an  Element  in  Civilization.  155 

their  standing  very  much,  but  they  were  only  occa- 
sional men  in  generations:  there  could  be  only  one 
now  and  then,  because  they  rose  by  controlling  men,  not 
by  contracting  with  them.  In  our  day,  nearly  every 
civilized  man  can  contract. 

The  system  of  property-holding  under 
dom  S'dSte^®"  which  Mahomet  and  Genghis  Khan  rose, 
foTher  ^"  ^^°'^^  ^^^  communal  (54),  with  some  slavery 
and  hardly  any  Contract.  There  is  hardly 
any  Contract  under  the  communal  system,  because 
nobody  has  enough  estate  in  the  land  to  make  much 
contracting  with  it,  or  its  produce,  possible. 

The  property-system  under  which  Hildebrand  and 
Rudolph  of  Hapsburg,  for  instance,  rose,  was  Feudal  (55) 
with  some  little  contract.  There  was  more  contract 
under  the  feudal  system  than  under  the  communal, 
because  the  estates  in  land  were  much  longer:  at  the 
outset  of  the  sj^stem  they  were  generally  for  life,  and 
rapidly  became  transferable  and  even  hereditary,  tho 
always  limited,  of  course,  by  the  rights  of  the  overlord. 

The  system  under  which  Lincoln  and  Garfield  and 
Peabody  and  Peter  Cooper  rose,  is  of  course  the  most 
advanced  of  all — private  ownership  and  contract  every- 
where. 

We  find,  then,  Slavery,  no  Contract;  Communism, 
hardly  any;  Feudalism,  a  little;  Private  Property, 
Contract  ever}nA^here. 

Under  feudalism,  the  relation  of  each  man  to  his 
feudal  superior,  was  apparently  one  of  contract  to  fur- 
nish so  much  military  or  personal  service;  or  later,  a 
certain  portion  of  the  products  of  his  land.  But  reflec- 
tion shows  that  it  was  a  contract  only  so  far  as  a  con- 
tract can  be  made  by  one  side,  and  that  side  the  stronger. 

As  men  have  risen  under  all  systems,  of  course  there 
is  no  system  where  all  men  stand  still.  In  other  words, 
there  has  been  no  condition  of  universal  Status  or  of 
universal  Contract.  All  that  the  facts  show  is  that  the 
more  Status  and  the  more  Communism,  the  fewer  men 
rise;   the  more  Contract  and  the  more  Private  Owner- 


156  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§172 

ship,  the  more  men  rise.  Under  the  amount  of  Contract 
in  the  United  States,  a  thousand  men — probably  ten 
thousand,  possibly  a  hundred  thousand,  improve  their 
condition,  where  one  does  in  Russia  or  India,  or  did  in 
mediaeval  Europe  or  under  the  Turks  or  Tartars. 

The  first  marked  decrease  of  Status  and  increase  of 
Contract  appears  in  the  decline  of  Feudalism,  which  is  an- 
other name  for  Militarispi,  and  in  the  increase  of  Private 
Property.  Militarism  declined  as  civilization  advanced, 
.„  .    ,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Europe  is  a  col- 

evoiye,  militarism  lection  of  camps  to-day.  But  those  camps 
declines.  have  ensured  peace  in  Europe  since  1870: 

each  nation  has  been  merely  playing  soldier  to  keep  the 
others  from  attacking  it.  Before  1870,  there  had  never 
been  ten  years  without  war  among  them. 

The  decline  of  Militarism  was  essential  to  doing  away 
with    Status,  because  extreme  militant  conditions  are 

necessarily  conditions  of  status:  people 
a^fo'rm  o?s"tatus.'^     ^^^  simply  command  and  obey :  the  enemy 

will  not  allow  them  any  chance  for  divided 
policy,  or  much  chance  to  do  business  or  accumulate 
property.  Hence  it  is  only  in  civilized  society  that 
the  chief  activities,  instead  of  being  warlike  or  militant 
can  be  industrial.  In  a  militant  society,  the  men-  gen- 
erally do  what  they  are  compelled  to;  in  an  industrial 
society,  they  do  what  they  agree  to :  so  they  are  making 
contracts  all  the  time. 

175.  Fighting  ver-  I^  really  is  a  question  between  a  fighting 
sus  producing.  \{{q  and  a  trading  life,  or  rather  a  pro- 
ducing life.  With  communal  or  feudal  property,  people 
never  produced  enough  to  get  rich,  and  the  only  way 
people  like  those  of  India  or  Greece  or  Rome  ever  got 
rich,  was  by  robbing  somebody  else.  And  as  a  fact, 
they  never  did  get  rich  in  the  modern  sense.  A  few 
people  got  rich,  and  made  a  great  show,  and  did  some 
fine  work  in  art,  literature  and  statesmanship;  but  the 
masses  were  slaves. 
,-,n  /  .  ,„  *  ^  ^      Among   communal   and  feudal   peoples 

175  (a).  Illustrated  ,  ?     .         ,  .  atm  i 

in  nations  of  to-day,  it  IS  about  the  same,  ihere  has 
to-day.  ^^^  been  much  change  in  Russia  and  India 

and  China,  for  instance,  except  in  name. 


§  177]     Contract  as  an  Element  in  Civilization.  157 

Japan  is  the  greatest  instance  the  world  ever  saw  of 
rapid  growth  in  wealth,  power  and  civilization;  and  she 
is  an  illustration  of  our  thesis:  her  progress  has  been 
accompanied  with  the  most  rapid  change  ever  seen  of 
communal  and  feudal  property  into  private  property, 
of  a  general  condition  of  status  into  one  of  contract. 
In  Japan,  too,  despite  some  superficial  appearances, 
private  property  and  contract  depended  on  the  down- 
fall of  militarism:  in  the  barbarous  and  feudal  sense 
of  every  man  being  a  fighter  and  thinking  of  little  but 
fighting,  militarism  has  gone.  The  Japanese  gentle- 
man does  not  now  carry  a  sword  much  oftener  than 
the  English  gentleman,  and  in  Japan,  despite  the  won- 
derful showing  in  her  war  with  Russia,  fighting  is  or- 
dinarily as  much  a  matter  of  special  profession  as  in 
France  or  Germany. 

The  spread  of  the  institution  of  private 
Property ^isesserf-  property,  then,  as  distinct  from  communal 
belond'sK  property  (54)  or  feudal  property  (55),  is 
necessary  to  change  a  condition  of  status 
into  one  of  contract,  because  to  do  much  contracting, 
a  man  must  have  property  of  his  very  own.  If  the 
community  or  the  overlord  owns  all  the  real  estate, 
there  is  not  much  personal  property  to  contract  with. 
No  communal  or  feudal  people  ever  got  much  personal 
property  yet,  unless  by  pillage. 

While  wealth  is  not  civilization,  there  never  has  been 
any  broad  and  high  civilization  without  wealth.  The 
boasted  poverty  of  Sparta,  for  instance,  was  accom- 
panied by  virtual  slavery  of  every  man  to  the  state,  and 
by  a  general  belief  that  skill  in  theft  was  a  virtue. 

As,  then,  v/ealth  depends  on  manufacturing  and 
trading,  we  seem  brought  to  the  practical  conclusion 
that  civilization  rests  on  people  trading  freely  with 
177  Civilization  ^ach  other,  and  such  is  the  fact  regarding 
and  trade  go  to-  all  civilization  except  the  sort  built  on 
^®*  ^^'  pillage  and  slavery,  and  that  sort  is  nar- 

row and  perishing.      There  never  has  been  very  high 
civilization  enjoyed  by  the  general  community,  without  a 


158  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  ^77 

great  deal  of  trading;  and  the  higher  the  civiHzation,  the 
more  the  trading.  Then  comes  in  the  fact  that  tliere 
never  has  been  much  trading  without  the  wide  preva- 
lence of  the  institutions  of  private  property  and  con- 
tract, and  there  is  no  reason  in  sight  to  believe  that 
there  ever  will  be ;  and  then  follows  the  conclusion  that 
a  producing,  trading,  contracting  form  of  civilization 
is  as  much  needed  to  produce  from  the  ranks  of  the 
common  people  a  statesman  like  Lincoln,  as  to  produce 
a  manufacturer  like  Peter  Cooper. 
...on    I .     r  All  this  demonstrates  that  a  man  who 

178.  Breaking  Con-   ,  .  ^         -    •       i    •         i  •  i-.^i 

tracts  and  advoca-    breaks  a  contract  IS  domg  his  mean  little 
ting  Socialism.        ^-^^^^  toward  bringing  the  world  back  to 

the  condition  of  status;  and  that  a  man  who  advo- 
cates socialism  is  trying  to  put  the  state  in  the  place 
of  the  slaveholder,  and  so  to  lessen  the  amount  of  con- 
tract— to  make  government  command  what  people  shall 
do,  instead  of  leaving  them  to  contract  to  do  what 
they  please — in  short  he  too  would  get  us  back  to  status. 
Here  are  two  views  on  the  subject  that  are  worth 
thinking  over:  In.  1903,  Grand  Master  Morrisey  of  the 
Brotherhood  of  Railway  Trainmen  said  to  his  national 
convention :  "We  shall  see  the  time  when  we  will  regard 
the  contract-breaker  .  .  .  with  as  much  contempt  as 
we  now  regard  the  scab."  C.  P.  Shea,  President  of 
the  International  Brotherhood  of  Teamsters,  on  trial 
at  this  writing  for  instigating  the  assaults  and  murders 
in  the  Chicago  Teamsters'  strike,  said:  "I  do  not  con- 
sider anything  a  violation  of  an  agreement,  that  is  done 
to  uphold  the  principles  of  trades-unionism." 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

GENERAL    LAW    OF    CONTRACT. 

Now  we  will  consider  the  details  of  Contract.  Courts 
do  not  want  to  use  their  time  without  reason — when, 
for  instance,  somebody  claims  that  there  was  a  con- 
tract when  really  there  was  none  at  all:  so  the  courts 
have  established  a  test  by  which  to  determine,  when 
parties  dispute,  whether  there  really  was  a  contract 
between  them. 

179.  Essentials  of  a       To   be   a   contract,   there   must  be   an 
Contract.  offer  by  one  side,  an  acceptance  by  the 

other,  and   a  reasonable   consideration   why  the   offer 
should  be  made  and  accepted. 

All  such  considerations  are  found  to  be  included 
under  the  three  categories  of  something  to  be  given, 
something  to  be  done  or  refrained  from,  or  natural 
love  and  affection.  The  Romans  included  it  all  (except 
natural  love  and  affection)  in  four  cases — I  give  to  get 
you  to  give,  I  act  to  get  you  to  give,  I  give  to  get  you 
to  act,  and  I  act  to  get  you  to  act.* 

But  the  subject  is  not  really  covered  by  something 
given  or  to  be  given,  or  something  done  or  to  be 
done:  it  may  include  something  not  to  be  done,  or, 
as  already  said,  something  to  be  refrained  from.  A 
has  a  right  to  do  something,  B  offers  him  something 
not  to,  A  agrees.  Now  A  does  not  agree  either  to  give 
or  do,  but  merely  to  refrain,  yet  he  binds  B  to  give  or 
do  what  he  offered  as  an  inducement  for  the  refraining. 

*  Do  ut  des,  do  ut  facias,  facto  ut  des,  facto  ut  facias. 

159 


i6o  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  i79 

Yet  if  we  take  "act"  in  the  broad  sense  of  a  course  of 
conduct,  the  Romans'  pat  way  of  putting  it,  does  cover 
the  idea  of  refraining  being  a  "consideration".  "By 
a  man's  acts  shall  he  be  judged" — "acts"  there  evi- 
dently includes  temperance  and  self-restraint — refrain- 
ing from  certain  acts,  as  much  as  doing  certain  others. 
179  (a),  iiiustm-  Now  to  illustrate  each  kind  of  contract : 
^'°"^-  A  offers  B  a  dollar  for  a  plant ;  each  article 

is  given  that  the  other  may  be  given.  This  is  Roman 
case  I.  A  offers  B  a  dollar  to  do  a  day's  work.  This 
covers  Roman  case  II.  A  offers  B  to  do  a  day's  work 
for  a  dollar.  This  is  Roman  case  III.  And  A  offers  B 
to  do  a  day's  work  if  B  will  take  him  for  a  drive  on 
Sunday.     This  is  Roman  case  IV. 

To  illustrate  the  case  the  Roman  summary  leaves 
out — where  the  consideration  is  refraining  from  doing 
something:  A  has  a  lot  next  to  B's,  and  proposes  to 
build  a  wall  that  will  shut  out  light  and  air  from  B's 
house;  B  offers  him  a  thousand  dollars  to  refrain  from 
doing  it:    A  refrains:     B  is  bound  to  pay  the  money. 

It  may  be  observed  in  passing  (tho  we  shall  return 
to  the  subject  again)  that  while  it  may  not  be  right 
to  shut  light  and  air  out  of  your  neighbor's  house,  it 
may  be  more  nearly  right  than  it  would  be  to  keep 
your  own  wife  and  children  in  rooms  too  small  for  them, 
or  to  have  noise  or  anything  else  from  your  neighbor's 
windows  disturbing  them. 

180.  Natural  Love  To  illustrate  a  contract  where  the  con- 
and Affection.  sideration  is  natural  love  and  affection: 

A  father  agrees  to  do  something  for  a  son  with- 
out receiving  anything  in  return.  Now  the  law  does 
not  enforce  mere  gifts,  but  it  will  hold  this  to  be  a 
good  contract,  because  it  holds  the  natural  love  and 
affection  to  be  a  consideration.  Yet  that  considera- 
tion seems  queer,  because  if  a  father  agrees  to  do  some- 
thing for  a  son  because  he  loves  him  so  much,  and  then 
refuses  to  stand  by  it,  he  simply  proves  that  he  did  not 
love  his  son  that  much — in  other  words,  that  there  was 
no  consideration ;  all  of  which  seems  to  show  that  where 
natural  love  and  affection  is  alleged  to  be  the  con- 


§  i8i]  General  Law  of  Contract.  i6i 

sideration,  the  contract  may  be  a  very  weak  one;  and 
that  where  natural  love  and  affection  is  strong  enough 
to  make  a  contract  strong,  there  must  be  love  enough 
to  make  a  contract  unnecessary.  Yet  there  is  a  more 
logical  view  than  that  the  father  does  it  because  of 
his  own  love  for  his  child,  namely,  that  the  father  makes 
the  contract  because  the  child  gives  him  the  "natural 
love  and  affection."  But,  strange  to  say,  I  do  not 
happen  to  have  known  this  view  presented  elsewhere. 
Yet  there  is  good  reason,  after  all,  why  courts  should 
support  such  contracts,  even  if  the  consideration  is  held 
to  be  natural  love  and  affection  entertained  by  the  per- 
son making  the  promise:  for  if  a  man  fails  in  busi- 
ness or  dies,  those  who  take  charge  of  his  affairs  must 
carry  out  his  contracts  as  far  as  they  can,  while  his 
mere  intended  gifts,  where  there  is  no  consideration, 
may  frequently  be  set  aside.  So  it  is  more  merciful  to 
his  unfortunate  family,  to  put  his  gifts  to  them  on  as 
good  a  footing  as  his  business  transactions.  Yet,  tho  the 
courts  will  generally  enforce  contracts  based  on  ' '  natu- 
ral love  and  affection",  unless  there  is  also  a  "good 
and  valuable  consideration"  they  are  apt  to  look  with 
suspicion  upon  them,  and  to  set  them  aside  if  they 
bear  any  strong  indication  of  wronging  creditors  or 
later  purchasers  for  valuable  consideration. 

181.  Promises  and  Of  course  entirely  outside  of  any  "con- 
Contracts,  sideration"  whatever,  a  promise  ought  to 
be  as  binding  as  a  contract,  in  honor:  because  there 
should  be  no  honor  less  than  perfect  honor;  but  it  is 
not  as  binding  in  lav/,  and  this  because,  for  many  rea- 
sons, law  cannot  deal  with  so  delicate  a  thing  as  honor. 
Justice  is  as  high  as  law  can  go. 

We  spoke  (1636)  of  endorsements  being  made,  like 
promises,  without  consideration,  simply  from  friend- 
ship or  favor.  The  question  of  whether  the  law  will 
enforce  them,  of  course  cannot  come  up  regarding  the 
person  originally  responsible  on  the  paper:  for  the  en- 
dorsement is  simply  an  obligation  to  pay,  not  the  prin- 
cipal, but  third  parties,  if  he  does  not.     But  if  those 


1 62  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  i8i 

third  parties  are  innocent  holders  for  value  paid,  the 
law  enforces  the  endorsement.  Yet  often  the  third 
party — a  bank  for  instance,  is  not  an  "innocent  third 
party",  but  knows  that  the  endorsement  is  merely  for 
accommodation,  and  yet  takes  the  accommodation  paper, 
just  as  it  loans  money  at  the  market  rate  if  it  is  higher 
than  the  legal  rate,  because  it  depends  upon  people 
to  carry  out  their  contracts  without  appealing  to  defects 
in  the  law. 

If  paper  has  been  forged,  its  possession  for  value 
by  an  innocent  third  party,  does  not  make  it  good, 
unless  the  person  whose  name  is  forged  can  be  held  for 
some  gross  carelessness.  The  reason  is  that  nobody 
ever  undertook  to  pay  it. 

Justice  requires  enforcement  of  contracts,  and  not  of 
promises,  because  breaking  a  promise  without  consider- 
ation, takes  nothing  from  the  other  man,  while  break- 
ing a  contract  takes  from  him  whatever  he  does  or  gives 
on  his  side,  or  the  thought  and  trouble  and  arrange- 
ments he  may  have  been  put  to  in  making  the  contract, 
and  toward  carrying  it  out.  To  illustrate:  if  A  is  under 
promise  to  B  and  under  contract  to  C,  and  then  fails 
or  dies,  so  that  both  cannot  be  satisfied,  C,  who  has 
parted  with  some  consideration,  would  suffer  more 
than  B,  who  has  parted  with  nothing:  therefore  the 
law  does  what  it  can  to  protect  the  contract,  while 
it  pays  no  attention  to  the  promise. 

But  where  natural  love  and  affection  is  the  consid- 
eration, C  has  not  parted  with  anything,  and  yet  the 
law  treats  the  case  as  if  he  had,  because  there  would 
be  so  much  hardship  if  the  law  should  require  the 
representatives  of  bankrupts  or  deceased  persons  to  do 
as  much  to  keep  all  promises  alleged  (perhaps  falsely) 
by  strangers,  as  to  keep  promises  to  relatives.  True, 
people  often  love  outsiders  more  than  relatives,  but  the 
law  cannot  go  into  as  fine  points  as  that:  proof  is  too 
difficult — natural  love  and  affection — that  is,  such  as 
it  is  natural,  under  ordinary  circumstances,  for  all 
men  to  have,  is  as  much  as  the  law  can  attempt  to 
take  into  account. 


§  183]  General  Law  of  Contract.  163 

It  is  undoubtedly  something  of  a  fiction 
ega  c  ion.  ^^  make  "natural  love  and  affection"  a 
"consideration",  like  money,  or  goods,  or  services,  or 
self-restraint,  but  many  of  the  greatest  improvements 
in  the  law  have  been  made  by  just  such  fictions  (190). 
For  instance:  where  people  are  damaged  by  others  in 
their  property  and  reputation,  and  come  into  court 
for  redress,  the  principle  of  the  law  is  that  they  must 
not  only  prove  that  the  acts  of  which  they  complain 
really  took  place,  but  they  must  prove  that  the  acts 
were  damaging,  and  just  how  many  dollars'  worth; 
yet  if  a  woman  proves  that  she  has  been  slandered 
in  the  dearest  part  of  her  reputation,  the  law  brings 
in  a  fiction  that  she  has  been  damaged  by  the  slander, 
whether  it  fell  on  willing  ears  or  not,  and  does  not 
require  her  to  prove  that  she  was  damaged.  If  she 
really  was  damaged,  of  course  the  law's  assumption 
that  she  was,  is  not  strictly  a  fiction.  In  this  sense, 
fiction  is  a  technical  term  meaning  a  general  principle, 
regardless  of  whether  it  is  true  in  any  one  case  or  not. 

As  there  is  a  tendency  in  fictions  to  do  harm,  it  is  a 
maxim  of  the  law  that  fictions  must  never  work  injustice 
— that  is  to  say:  that  when  a  judge  finds  that  the 
fiction  usual  in  somewhat  similar  cases,  plainly  does  not 
justly  apply  to  the  case  in  hand,  he  must  not  decide 
as  if  it  did. 

183.  Mutuality  in  Now   let   US  consider  imituality  in  con- 

contracts,  tracts.     It   always   "takes    two    to    make 

a  bargain".  Contracts  must  always  be  mutual, — the 
understanding  must  be  mutual,  the  consideration  must 
be  mutual,  and  the  obligation  must  be  mutual. 

First:  the  understanding  must  be  mutual.  If  you 
say  that  to-morrow  you  will  lend  me  a  gun  now  in  the 
hands  of  a  friend,  if  I  will  bring  a  written  abstract  of 
ten  pages  of  Spencer,  and  I  agree  to  do  it  supposing 
you  mean  Spenser  the  poet,  while  you  really  mean 
Spencer  the  philosopher,  there  is  no  contract  between 
us,  for  our  understanding  is  not  mutual.  If  either 
of  us  finds  out  the  misunderstanding,  he  should  make 
a  reasonable  effort  to  let  the  other  know  that  there  is 


164  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  183 

no  contract,  so  that  in  case  the  abstract  of  the  poetry 
should  not  be  a  satisfactory  substitute  for  the  abstract 
of  the  philosophy,  one  may  not  lose  the  trouble  of 
getting  the  gun,  or  the  other  of  writing  the  abstract. 
It  would  be  reasonable  also  to  see  if  the  parties  could 
make  the  contract  that  one  or  the  other  intended — 
either  for  the  abstract  of  the  philosopher;  or,  if  the 
other  would  not  agree  to  that,  whether  he  would  be 
willing  to  make  the  contract  he  understood — regarding 
the  abstract  of  the  poet. 

The  second  point  necessary  to  the  mutuality  of  the 
contract,  is  mutuality  of  consideration — that  is  tofsay, 
as  said  before,  each  side  must  undertake  to  give  or 
do  or  not  do  something,  in  consideration  of  the  other 
side  undertaking  to  give  or  do  or  not  do  something. 
For  instance :  if  a  man  renders  a  service  such  as  helping 
a  horse  and  wagon  out  of  a  ditch,  without  the  owner 
asking  him  to,  or  agreeing  to  do  or  give  anything  in 
return,  he  cannot  make  the  owner  pay. 

It  seems  hard  not  to  be  paid  for  valuable  volunteer 
services,  and  any  decent  man  would  pay.  Yet  to 
admit  the  principle  that  volunteer  services  must  be  paid 
for,  would  overwhelm  the  world  with  superfluous  and 
worthless  pretexts  of  service — like,  for  instance,  needless 
opening  of  carriage  doors,  and  sweeping  of  crossings 
already  clean. 

As  farther  instances,  suppose  A  tells  B  that  he  will 
do  something  if  B  will  do  something  else- — that  A  will 
cook  the  breakfast  if  B  will  get  up  and  light  the  fire. 
They  are  not  under  contract  unless  B  says  he  will  light 
the  fire,  or  straightway  does  it,  and  lets  A  know  that 
he  has  done  it. 

Suppose  A  tells  B  he  will  do  something,  and  B  there- 
fore expects  that  he  will.  A  has  not  contracted  to  do  it, 
but  has  merely  promised. 

184,  Law  and  ^^  ^^"^  ^  contract  is  more  binding  than 

Religion.  a  promise  (as  we  have  seen),  or  even  than 

an  oath.  The  reason  is  that  an  oath  is  a  matter  of 
religion,  while  the  law  deals  only  with  justice.  In 
modern  times  people  know  that  it  is  as  much  a  mistake 


§i86  6]  General  Law  of  Contract.  165 

for  law  to  try  to  handle  religion  as  to  handle  honor. 
Now,   for  instance,   witnesses  need   not   swear  on  the 
Bible:    they  can  merely  "affirm",  if  they  prefer. 
185.  Justice  and  It  might   at   first   seem  that  in  honor, 

Honor.  one  party  to  a  contract  should  complete 

his  side  of  the  contract  even  if  the  other  does  not, 
because  he  has  promised ;  but  the  third  point  essential 
to  the  mutuality  of  a  contract  is  that  the  obHgation 
is  mutual.  If  one  side  fails  in  his  obligation,  that 
releases  the  other;  and  it  does  so  in  honor,  because  the 
dishonorable  have  no  claims  upon  honor.  And  that 
is  not  reducing  honor  to  the  level  of  justice,  because 
to  permit  the  dishonorable  to  make  claims  upon  honor, 
would  be  to  reduce  honor  to  injustice.  Honor  can 
never  be  contrary  to  justice.  If,  then,  the  dishonorable 
man  has  no  claims,  it  might  seem  at  first  that  anyone 
would  have  a  right  to  deceive  or  rob  him.  But  tho  the 
dishonorable  are  not  entitled  to  anything  beyond 
justice,  they  are  still  entitled  to  justice. 

If  one  man  agrees  to  pay  another  if  he 
ffi' wHr^not* ^  ^"^^  will  kill  a  man  or  set  a  house  on  fire,  and 
enforce.  the  Other  agrees,  there  is  a  contract,  but 

d"o'in''°'  ""°"^'  t^^  ^^^  ^^^^  ^°*  enforce  it,  because  it  is 
against  public  policy:  the  legal  maxim  is: 
"Men  may  contract,  but  not  to  do  wrong."  In  a  more 
extreme  case :  if  one  party  risked  his  life  and  liberty  to 
commit  murder  or  arson,  as  there  is  no  Vv^rong  in  the 
mere  payment  of  money,  honor  might  require  the  pay- 
ment of  even  the  wages  of  crime,  but  the  law  would  not 
enforce  it. 

A  bet,  too,  has  all  the  characteristics  of 
'  °^^'^*'  a  contract,  but  the  law  will  not  enforce  it, 
because  betting  adds  nothing  to  the  wealth  of  the  com- 
munity, as  a  contract  enforced  at  the  expense  of  the 
community  ought  to;  and  because  the  habit  leads  a 
man  to  laziness  and  improvidence.  And  looking  at  the 
mutuality  of  bets,  in  the  long  run  they  are  hardly  so 
nearly  an  even  thing  that  they  can  claim  enforcement 
even  on  the  ground  of  fairness:    for  in  the  long  run, 


1 66  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  i86  & 

those  who  lose  must  suffer  more  than  those  who 
gain  enjoy.  This  requires  a  word  of  explanation:  for 
in  the  long  run,  of  course,  bettors'  fortunes  must  aver- 
age the  same.  Now  assume  that  average  to  be  any 
sum  you  please — say  $10,000.  Then,  as  President 
Hadley  *  points  out,  a  man  who  loses  $5,000  will  lose 
what  his  family  has  come  to  regard  as  essential  com- 
fort, and  will  suffer  seriously,  while  the  man  who  wins 
will  not  receive  anything  that  his  habits  require,  but  a 
mere  superfluity  that  he  will  be  apt  to  waste  as  gamblers 
almost  always  do.  In  fact,  often  so  unbalanced  are 
the  two  sides  that  loss  is  suicide,  and  gain  a  brief 
period  of  dissipation — evil  both  ways,  tho  dispropor- 
tionate, and  seldom  if  ever  any  real  good  either  way. 

If  one  party  to  an  alleged  contract  agrees  to  do 
something  impossible — to  drain  the  ocean  or  move 
Mount  Washington,  he  is  not  liable  in  damages  if  he 
fails,  because  an  agreement  to  do  an  impossibility  is 
not  a  legal  consideration. 

But  if  he  agrees  to  do  a  reasonable  or  proper  thing, 
and   fails  because   of  accident — sickness  or  a   delayed 
train,   he  must   pay  damages:    the  misfortune  is  his, 
not  that  of  the  other  party. 
.oc,  ,  .-T,   A  *        Yet  of  course  he  can  guard  against  acci- 

186  (^cj.  'The  Act  .        1  .  ,  r  •       . 

of  God  or  the  Pub-  dents  m  his  agreement,  as  tor  instance, 
lie  Enemy.  carriers  of  goods  generally  guard  against 

the  "Acts  of  God  and  the  Public  Enemy",  meaning  as 
"the  act  of  God",  any  convulsion  of  nature,  Hke  storm 
or  flood  or  earthquake,  or  probably  a  sickness  not 
brought  on  by  a  man's  own  fault;  and  as  the  act  of 
the  "public  enemy",  that  of  any  foreign  force  with 
which  we  might  be  at  war,  or  of  a  pirate  at  war  with  all 
mxankind.  A  native  mob  or  insurrection  is  not  in- 
cluded in  the  legal  definition. 

If  a  man  agrees  to  do  all  the  work  he 

seif-pfeservatior     ^^^  possibly  do,  fcr  less  than  will  keep 

him  alive,  he  should  not  go  on  until  he 

dies,  because  it  was  a  promise  to  commit  suicide:   that 

is  not  legal:  so  he  is  not  bound  by  contract.         Whether 

*  "Economics." 


§  1 89  General  Law  of  Contract.  167 

he  should  go  on  and  take  his  employer's  money  until 
he  can  find  another  place,  and  then  leave  his  employer 
in  the  lurch,  is  not  a  question  of  contract,  as  there  is 
no  contract.  It  is  a  question  of  honor,  and  is  brought 
up  merely  to  help  define  the  boundaries  of  the  subject. 

But  let  us  take  another  case  of  doubtful 
furnish  wisdom.*       Contracts.     Suppose  a  man  agrees  to  work 

for  enough  to  keep  him  alive,  but  less  than 
his  production.  It  is  a  contract,  because  the  law  does 
not  assume  it  to  be  either  illegal  or  immoral  to  make 
a  bad  bargain,  but  only  foolish;  and  the  law  cannot 
attempt  to  cure  people  of  folly,  or  guard  them  against 
the  consequences  of  it. 

189.  Contracts  which  People  can  get  into  contracts  without 
the  law  assumes.  knowing  it,  just  as  they  can  get  into  other 
scrapes,  through  ignorance  or  stupidity.  This  seems 
not  to  agree  with  the  earlier  statement  that  there  must 
be  a  mutual  understanding,  but  in  some  cases  the 
law  assumes  that  there  is,  and  will  not  listen  to  any 
evidence  to  the  contrary.  For  instance :  if  a  servant 
or  mechanic  or  clerk  is  hired  for  any  period — say  a  week 
or  a  month,  and  continues  on  without  either  side  saying 
anything,  the  law  assumes  a  contract  for  another  pe- 
riod of  the  same  length.  So  if  a  house  is  hired  for  a 
period  so  brief  that  a  written  contract  is  not  neces- 
sary (82  b),  continued  occupancy  after  the  period,  with- 
out anything  being  said,  leads  the  law  to  assume  a  con- 
tract for  a  second  period,  and  so  on  indefinitely. 

The  law  also  implies  that  any  person  employed  to  do 
any  service  shall  receive  "what  he  has  deserved",* 
and  also  that  the  service  shall  be  performed  with  due 
skill  and  faithfulness.  If  it  is  not  so  performed,  serv- 
ants cannot  get  their  wages,  and  would  have  to  pay 
any  damages  caused  by  ignorance  and  carelessness. 

The'  law  may  perhaps  also  be  said  to  assume  con- 
tracts that  money  is  to  be  paid  back  (on  demand  unless 
specified)  in  any  of  three  cases — when  borrowed ;  when 
spent,  either  for  one's  benefit  by  another  with  the  bene- 
*  Quantum  memit. 


1 68  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  189 

ficiary's  consent  or  in  an  emergency;  or  received  from 
any  source  in  behalf  of  another. 

Similarly,  if  one  takes  any  article  having  value,  and 
nothing  is  said  about  price,  one  must  pay  "what  it 
was  worth",*  and  the  seller  cannot  recover  a  price 
beyond  that. 

If  merchants  keep  an  open  account,  a  contract  is  im- 
plied that  either  will  pay  in  case  the  balance  is  against 
him,  whenever  it  is  struck  at  the  customary  time. 

The  law  assumes  these  contracts  as  involving  "the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number".  They  exist 
only  by  approval  of  long  experience. 

The  law  makes  a  distinction  between 
soppe.  these  informal  contracts  and  formal  ones. 
In  fact,  it  is  sometimes  hard  to  tell  whether  there  is  a 
contract,  or  what  the  law  calls  an  estoppel,  that  is, 
whether  one  side  or  both  are  not  in  a  position  where 
they  are  stopped  (or  "estopped",  as  the  lawyers  say) 
from  denying  a  contract,  tho  none  may  have  been 
formally  entered  into.  For  instance,  in  some  cases  of 
renting  and  employing,  if  neither  party  had  said  any- 
thing until  after  a  second  term  had  been  entered  upon, 
a  court  might  hold  that  both  were  estopped  from  denying 
the  existence  of  a  contract,  and  would  have  to  act  just 
as  if  there  were  one.  There  is  another  kind  of  estoppel 
called  "estoppel  by  deed"  produced  by  putting  a  seal 
on  an  instrument.  After  the  seal  goes  on,  the  signer  is 
estopped  from  contradicting  anything  said  in  the  instru- 
ment. Otherwise  he  can  contradict  any  statement  that 
the  other  party  has  not  acted  upon.  But  action  by 
the  other  party  also  has  the  effect  of  an  estoppel. 

An  assumed  contract  or  an  estoppel,  seems  very 
closely  related  to  a  fiction  (182).  It  was  said  above 
that  "in  some  cases  ...  a  court  might  hold"  that 
there  was  an  estoppel.  We  were  touching  upon  "the 
glorious  uncertainties  of  the  law":  tho  there  are  a 
great  many  exact  rules,  circumstances  vary  so  much 
that  it  is  hard  to  tell  before  a  case  comes  to  trial,  what 
rules  are  going  to  fit  it. 

*  Quantum  valebat. 


§  193]  General  Law  of  Contract.  i6g 

191.  Carelessness  Careless  people,  and  the  people  who 
and  Fraud.  haunt  the  borderland  between  carelessness 
and  fraud,  often  get  into  positions  where  they  are  es- 
topped from  Tienying  responsibilities  that  they  did  not 
really  intend  to  undertake. 

Carelessness  and  fraud  come  pretty  close  to  each  other, 
because  one  who  is  careless  about  what  he  does,  is  very 
apt  to  become  careless  about  what  he  says;  and  as 
careless  people  are  constantly  getting  into  scrapes, 
they  are  worse  tempted  than  careful  people  to  try  to 
lie  out  of  scrapes.  A  legal  maxim  that  covers  most 
cases  where  a  man  can  properly  be  estopped  from  deny- 
ing an  obligation,  is  that  "No  man  can  take  advantage 
of  his  own  wrong",  and  carelessness  is  a  wrong. 

As  to  fraud,  some  authorities  claim  that  there  is  an 
implied  contract  regarding  it — that  it  is  an  implied  part 
of  every  contract  that  there  shall  be  no  fraud.  But 
that  seems  drawing  it  unnecessarily  fine.  The  matter 
seems  covered  by  the  general  principle  of  the  law — 
to  enforce  no  contract  where  there  is  fraud,  and  always 
to  give  damages  against  fraud. 

192.  Fraud  never  Just  what  Constitutes  fraud,  however, 
^^^"^<i-  the  law  is  very  careful  not  to  say :  because 
human  wisdom  could  not  frame  a  definition  broad 
enough  to  cover  all  possible  cases  of  fraud,  any  more 
than  all  possible  cases  of  any  other  kind;  and  even  if 
it  could  cover  all  cases  of  fraud  heretofore  known,  the 
ingenuity  of  the  wicked  would  invent  new  cases  not 
covered  by  the  definition,  and  so  escape.  Therefore, 
the  court  has  to  determine  each  case.  A  fairly  intelli- 
gent court  can  follow  the  serpent's  track  more  flexibly 
than  a  rigid  definition  could. 

No  transaction,  whether  based  on  contract  or  not, 
can  stand  after  it  is  found  to  be  fraudulent,  provided 
suit  to  set  it  aside  is  brought  within  a  reasonable  time 
of  the  fraud  being  discovered — for  agreements  not  under 
seal,   in  most  of  our  states,   six  years. 

193.  Statutes  of  A  limit  to  the  time  is  secured  under 
Limitations  again,     the    Statutes    of    limitations  (82^)  which 


lyo  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  193 

were  passed  largely  to  protect  innocent  persons.  A 
long  time  after  a  piece  of  wrong-doing,  it  would  be  very- 
easy  to  blackmail :  for  it  would  then  be  easy  to  manu- 
facture evidence  that  could  not  be  refiited. 

Moreover,  after  many  years,  when  the  person  who 
perpetrated  the  fraud  might  be  dead,  it  would  hardly 
be  fair  to  have  somebody  coming  down  on  his  heirs. 

194.  Force  vitiates  Fraud  is  not  the  only  condition  that  will 
contract.  vitiate  a  contract  otherwise  good:  an  as- 
sent obtained  by  force  or  threat  is  no  more  valid  than 
one  obtained  by  fraud. 

Of  course  fraud  and  crime  take  up  a  great  deal  of 
time  of  the  courts,  and  of  course  the  courts  (not  to 
speak  of  the  police,  jails,  reformatories  and  prisons) 
cost  the  taxpayers  a  great  deal  of  money.  Yet  if  every- 
body were  honest,  we  could  not  get  along  without 
courts,  unless  everybody  were  wise  too :  for 

195.  Courts  needed  various  sorts  of  unwisdom  often  tangle  up 
afmucVls""'^"'"  people's  rights  so  that  they  have  to  go 
against  Fraud.  f^to  court  to  find  out  what  their  rights  are. 
[%uSfon-  '"  Take  a  case  of  what  is  called  in  law 
struction  'and         "  conf usion  "  of  onc  pcrsou's  materials  with 

friendly  suits.  ^ ,  ,      ^    J-  ,      . ,  - . 

another  person  s  labor — a  man  building  a 
house  for  another,  or  a  woman  making  an  expensive 
frock,  may  get  it  all  wrong  and  spoil  a  lot  of  good  mate- 
rial, and  yet  suppose  that  it  was  being  done  right,  per- 
haps because  the  owner  of  the  materials  may  have  failed 
to  give  clear  directions.  Again,  intricate  questions  con- 
stantly arise  over  the  meaning  and  effect  of  old  contracts, 
or  of  provisions  of  wills,  as  well  as  of  statutes  passed  by 
legislative  bodies ;  and  as  somebody  must  put  a  working 
construction  on  them,  that  is  generally  done  by  the 
courts.  Honest  people  are  getting  into  disputes  over 
such  matters  all  the  time,  and  many  suits  are,  even  in 
fact  as  in  name,  "friendly" — simply  to  get  a  matter 
settled  in  one  way  or  the  other,  when  the  parties  do 
not  care  which  way.  Such  cases  are  perhaps  most 
frequent  when  people  are  acting  for  others — executors 
for  estates,  guardians  for  minors,  trustees  for  corpora- 


§  1 97]  General  Law  of  Contract.  171 

tions;    and  to  avoid  liability  themselves,  they  must  be 
sure  to  act  legally,  so  they  need  an  authoritative  decree 

,„_    „   ^    ,  Not  all  contracts  are  made  by  people 

196.    Contracts  r  ,      r  1     1  -1    .    1 

when  parties  do       face  to  tace:  many  are  made  by  mail,  tele- 
not  meet.  graph  and  even  telephone. 

A  man  making  an  offer  in  a  letter,  is  not  bound  by 
it  before  the  other  party  has  posted  his  letter  of  accept- 
ance. Most  judges  have  decided  that  the  acceptor  can- 
not revoke  (say  by  special  messenger  or  telegram)  be- 
tween posting  his  letter  and  the  receipt  of  it  by  the 
man  who  made  the  offer,  but  there  have  not  been 
enough  cases  tried  since  the  telegraph  came  into  gen- 
eral use,  for  the  subject  to  have  been  so  thoroughly 
argued  that  all  judges  are  now  agreed. 

Tho  the  offerer  has  a  privilege  of  revoking  until  his 
offer  is  accepted,  the  acceptor  should  not  have  the  same 
privilege  until  his  acceptance  is  received,  because,  for 
many  reasons,  the  general  principle  of  law  is  that  a 
contract  is  made  when  both  parties  consent  to  the  same 
thing.  It  is  of  course  important  to  fix  the  time  of 
this  consent.  A  man  may  write  a  letter  of  acceptance 
without  being  at  all  sure  that  he  will  post  it,  but  post- 
ing it  is  the  last  thing  he  can  do  with  it,  and  when 
he  does  that,  it  is  reasonable  to  conclude  that  his 
mind  is  then  made  up,  and  consequently,  that  at  that 
instant  the  parties  are  agreed,  hence  that  the  contract 
is  made,  and  therefore  that  neither  can  revoke.  Another 
argument  is  that  the  proposer  has  made  the  mail  and 
telegraph  operators  his  agents  (214)  to  receive  the  ac- 
ceptance, and  that  consequently,  when  it  is  delivered 
to  them,  it  is  legally  delivered  to  him. 

And  yet  this  view  does  not  seem  so  free  from  doubt 
that  it  ought  to  be  finally  considered  as  the  law.  There 
is  certainly  room  for  a  great  deal  more  argument,  as  is 
shown  by  the  fact  that  judges  are  not 
ivoiulion.'^* '^  ^"  y^"^  absolutely  agreed,  and  the  only  safe 
way  is  to  make  a  proposition  subject  to 
the  proposer  receiving  word  of  its  acceptance  by  a 
specified  time. 


172  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§197 

And  doubt  has  certainly  at  some  time  covered 
most  questions  that  are  now  clearly  settled:  nearly 
all  the  matters  that  seem  very  simple  ones  to  us, 
were  by  no  means  as  simple  to  our  ancestors.  For  in- 
stance, take  as  simple  a  thing  as  regard  for  human  life. 
When  a  sovereign  kills  a  subject  who  displeases  him,  our 
ancestors,  even  as  Tate  as  Henry  VIII. — yes,  as  late  as 
James  II.,  would  have  differed  as  to  whether  it  was  a 
legal  execution  or  a  murder.  But  now,  if  our  Presi- 
dent or  one  of  our  governors  were  deliberately  to  kill 
an  unoffending  man,  it  would  be  a  murder;  and  even 
as  to  the  sheriff  who  hangs  or  electricutes  a  man  nowa- 
days, a  great  many  people  think  that  any  voluntary 
killing  of  a  human  being,  except  in  immediate  defence 
of  one's  self  or  another,  is  wrong,  and  will  some  day 
be  against  the  law. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


LAW  OF  CONTRACTS  CONCERNING  PERSONAL  PROPERTY. 

So  much  for  the  general  principles  of  Contract;  and 
as  to  our  last  few  words  on  the  uncertainty  and  evolu- 
tion of  law — that  is  a  topic  to  which  we  shall  have  to 
revert  more  than  once.  Now  let  us  examine  into  some 
of  the  specific  laws  of  different  kinds  of  contracts,  be- 
ginning with  such  an  every-day  matter  as  selling  and 
delivering  property.  It  is  not  always  as  simple  as  we 
are  apt  to  think. 

Suppose  I  have  a  horse  and  want  you  to  buy  him. 
You  say  you  will  give  me  $ioo  for  him,  and  will  bring  it 
next  day;  and  I  say:  "All  right,  I'll  send  him  to 
you";  and  we  separate.  Suppose  I  change  my  mind. 
Can  you  oblige  me  to  sell  him  ?  *  No :  for  under  the 
Statute  of  Frauds  (82  b)  a  contract  for 
|.98.  Sale  and  De-  over  $50  (later  legislation  varies  it  in  the 
(Ih^'as  gener-  different  statcs  from  $30  to  $200)  must  be 
ally  affected  by      put  in  Writing,  at  Icast  unless  there  was  de- 

the  Statute  of  ^-  r  .  i   •  i  r 

Frauds,  livcry  ot  moncy  or  somethmg  else  from 

one  side  to  the  other,  or  some  other  part- 
performance.  Here  neither  horse  nor  money  was  de- 
livered. 

Let  us  note  in  passing  that  the  law  also  requires  to 

*  While  I  have  had  to  realize  the  failure  of  the  dialogue  form, 
in  which  the  earlier  editions  of  this  book  were  written,  it  seems 
so  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  topics  of  this  chapter,  that  I  have 
ventured  to  retain  some  traces  of  it  for  them. 

173 


174  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  198  a 

be  written,  or  partly  performed,  all  contracts  relating  to 
real  estate  (except  a  lease  for  a  year  or  less  in  Nevv^ 
York — in  some  states,  three  years  or  less),  or  to  becom- 
ing responsible  for  somebody  else,  or  making  a  trustee 
personally  responsible  for  the  benefit  of  a  trust  estate 
(218),  or  to  something  to  be  done  more  than  a  year 
afterwards,  or  where  the  consideration  on  either  or  both 
sides  is  a  promise  to.  marry. 

The  law  requires  these  formalities,  because  the  obli- 
gation of  Contract  is  so  great,  and  the  necessity  of 
performing  contracts,  and  of  the  law's  enforcing  them, 
so  important,  that  it  has  been  found  wise  to  make 
people  cautious  in  entering  into  contracts,  and  to 
guard  people  from  getting  into  them  too  easily.  More- 
over, where  contracts  are  specially  important  or  pecu- 
liar, the  law  wants  better  evidence  of  their  existence 
and  nature,  than  mere  memory  of  spoken  words. 

Probably  no  statutes  have  ever  had  wider  efifects  than 
the  Statutes  of  Frauds.  But  it  is  a  most  instructive 
comment  on  the  uncertainty  of  legislative  wisdom 
that  many  good  lawyers  think  these  statutes  have  en- 
couraged more  fraud  than  they  have  prevented. 
198  W.  by  Part  To    return   to   our   contracts   in   selling 

Payment,  aj^(j  delivering  property :   if  you  had  given 

me  $5  on  account  of  the  horse,  he  would  then  be  under 
contract  of  sale,  the  $5  being  consideration  to  bind 
that  contract.  I  could  not  then  sell  him  to  anybody 
but  you,  and  give  you  back  your  $5.  Thus  for  personal 
propert}^,  part  payment  will  bind  in  the  absence  of 
writing. 

If  the  matter  in  hand,  instead  of  a  horse,  were  a  thou- 
sand bushels  of  oats  which  we  had  agreed  upon  a  sale  of, 
and  you  had  paid  me  for  only  a  bushel,  our  contract 
would  be  good  for  all. 

If  you  had  paid  for  none,  but  I  had  put  a  bushel  in 
your  buggy,  part  delivery  would  be  as  good  as  part 
payment. 

But  coming  back  to  the  horse,  suppose  I  had  been 
too  good-natured,  and  endorsed  a  friend's  note  (1636), 
and   were   to   find   on   my  way   home   that  the   sheriff 


§  2oo]         Law  of  Personal-Property  Contracts.  175 

had  taken  the  horse  to  pay  the  note  after  you  had 
paid  the  $5.  Is  he  still  my  horse?  Yes,  he  was  mine 
under  contract  of  sale.  But  if  the  entire 
price  had  been  paid  before  the  sheriff  took 
the  horse,  the  sheriff  took  your  horse.  It  would  be 
necessary  to  fix  the  time  of  both  events.  But  that 
would  not  be  easy,  and  as  "possession  is  nine  points 
of  the  law",  the  outcome  would  probably  be  that  the 
sheriff  would  hold  the  horse,  and  I  would  have  to 
return  your  money. 

Should  the  horse  be  killed  while  in  the  seller's  pos- 
session, it  would  be  the  buyer's  loss  only  if  title  had 
actually  passed — if,  for  instance,  either  party  had  said, 
without  contradiction,  words  fo  the  effect  that  it  was 
the  buyer's  horse,  and  that  the  seller  had  a  claim  on 
the  buyer  for  the  rest  of  the  money.  But  until  such  an 
arrangement  is  definitely  made,  or  until  the  horse  is 
delivered,  it  would  still  be  only  a  contract  of  sale. 
But  the  buyer  has  a  first  claim  on  him  for  any 
money  he  may  have  advanced  before  getting  posses- 
sion. 

Such  a  claim  is  usually  called  a  lien,  wiiich  means  in 
law  a  right  to  sell  property  to  recover  some  claim 
against  it.  Next  to  mortgages  and  judgments,  the 
most  frequent  liens  are  those  of  mechanics  against 
things — especially  houses,  that  they  have  made  or 
repaired. 

Now  to  return  to  the  horse-trade.     Suppose  the  horse 

had  been  paid  for,  but  there  w-as  not  time  to  make  a  good 

delivery  before  the  sheriff  took  him,  how 

199,  No  one  can  sell  is  the  buyer  to  get  him.?     The  law  would 
more  titletnan  he         •  r,-         .        -1,      -u  i.  1        • 
has.                     give    mm   to   the  buyer,  wherever  he   is. 

The  sheriff  can  only  sell  whatever  title  the 

seller  had  in  him,  and  after  he  was  paid  for,  the  seller 

had  none. 

That  would  of  course  be  hard  on  the  man  who  had 

bought  him  from  the  sheriff,  but  he  would  have  a  right 

to  get  back  the  money  he  had  paid  the  sheriff. 

200.  Possession  ^^   the   $ioo   had   been   paid,  the  horse 
and  oiwnership.        would  be  the  buyer's  property,  as  against 


176  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§200 

all  previous  claims,  except  a  registered  chattel  mort- 
gage (163  e),  even  tho  he  remained  with  the  seher. 

If  he  burned  up  in  the  stable  before  the  seller  had 
time  to  deliver  him,  it  would  be  the  buyer's  loss,  but 
the  seller  could  probably  still  collect  insurance  on  him, 
if  he  had  any,  because  policies  generally  cover  "goods 
sold  and  not  delivered",  but  if  the  buyer  had  paid, 
and  the  seller  should  collect  insurance,  he  would  have 
to  pay  it  to  the  buyer. 

But  suppose  farther  that  the  seller  had  paid  some 
bills  with  the  $100  on  the  way  home,  and  the  sheriff 
had  said:  "Well,  if  you've  just  sold  this  horse  for 
$100,  show  me  the  money:  I'll  take  that",  and  upon 
the  seller's  failing  to  show  the  money,  the  sheriff  had 
said  that  he  did  not  believe  the  seller  had  sold  the 
horse  at  all,  and  the  sheriff  had  taken  him  and  sold 
him.  He  would  still  be  the  bu3'-er's  horse,  no  matter 
in  whose  hands  the  sheriff  might  have  placed  him,  and 
the  buyer  would  have  a  right  to  take  him  wherever  he 
could  find  him— not  to  take  him  by  force,  however: 
because,  as  already  said,  no  man  can  legally  use  force 
except  in  self-defence,  or  in  arresting  for  crime:  in 
on,  n  *     other  cases,  he  must  appeal  to  the  law. 

201.  Owner  must       n\-i  i  11  1  , 

not  secure  posses-  I  he  buyer  could  enter  another  mans 
sion  by  force.  stable  to  get  his  horse,  but  only  without 

force.  If  force  is  used,  it  must  be  by  due  process  of 
law. 

Suppose  the  seller  had  not  paid  the  bills  with  the 
hundred  dollars,  and  when  the  buyer  sent  for  the  horse 
and  found  him  gone,  he  were  to  prefer  the  money  to 
the  horse  with  the  trouble  of  following  him  up  through 
the  sheriff's  hands,  and  so  he  were  to  ask  for  the  hundred 
dollars  back,  would  the  law  give  it  him?  Perhaps 
the  seller  ought  to,  as  he  would  have  got  the  buyer  into 
the  scrape,  but  the  law  would  not.  The  buyer  could 
reasonably  try  to  get  his  horse,  but  it  would  be  absurd 
to  try  to  get  the  seller's  money.  It  is  now  the  seller's 
hundred  dollars,  and  it  was  the  buyer's  horse  that  the 
sheriff  took. 


§  2  02  a]      Law  of  Personal-Pro pe7'ty  Contracts.  177 

-n-  r,  ,.  ,        If  the  seller  had  had  time,  before  meet- 

202.  Delivery  and     .  .  ,       .„     ^  1.11  .        ,1 

acceptance  complete  mg  the  sheriii,  to  Send  the  horse  to  the 
ownership.  buyer's  stables,  tho  the  buyer  had  not  paid, 

the  horse  would  have  been  the  buyer's,  and  the  seller 
would  have  had  a  good  claim  against  the  buyer  for  $100. 
202  (a)  Deiiuen  '^^^  Same  would  have  been  the  case  if 
to  agent  or  carrier  the  Seller  had  given  the  horse  to  the  ser- 
^"^  ■  vant    or    any   other    agent    of   the    buyer 

before  the  buyer  paid  for  him. 

If  the  seller  had  started  him  for  the  buyer's  stable  by 
the  seller's  own  servant,  and  the  sheriff  had  met  him,  he 
would,  unless  paid  for,  still  have  been  the  seller's  horse. 

We  have  seen  then  that  the  ways  in  which  the  transfer 
of  ownership  of  personal  property  can  be  effected,  are 
by  paying  for  it,  or  delivering  it  on  the  buyer's  premises, 
or  other  premises  named  by  the  buyer,  or  delivering 
it  to  him,  or  to  a  person  properly  acting  for  him. 

Accordingly,  in  shipping  goods,  they  become  the 
buyer's  upon  his  paying  for  them,  or  upon  delivery 
to  a  carrier  named  by  him,  or  to  any  common  or  public 
carrier,  unless  he  had  ordered  a  different  one.  Probably 
there  would  be  an  exception  to  the  last  rule  in  cities 
where  dealers  generally  deliver  the  goods  they  sell,  and 
sometimes  do  so  by  public  carriers.  Probably  a  court 
would  hold  that  a  dealer  in  goods  usually  delivered  at 
the  house,  is  bound  to  deliver  at  the  house  unless  he 
warns  the  buyer  that  they  go  at  his  risk. 

Upon  delivery  of  unpaid-for  goods,  tho  the  seller  no 
longer  owns  them,  he  has  in  place  of  them,  a  claim  on 
the  buyer.  He  should  not  deliver  them  unless  he 
thinks  the  claim  is  practically  worth  more  to  him  than 
the  goods. 

If  the  buyer  named  one  carrier,  and  the  seller  de- 
livered to  another,  the  goods  would  be  the  seller's  until 
the  buyer  received  them,  unless  it  was  impossible  to 
deliver  them  to  the  buyer's  carrier,  and  the  seller  had 
used  proper  diligence  to  get  as  good  a  one  as  possible 
in  his  place. 

In  such  a  case,  however,  if  the  goods  had  been  un- 


178  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§202  a 

reasonably  delayed  or  damaged  or  overcharged  for 
freight,  the  buyer  would  not  be  bound  to  receive  them. 
He  would,  however,  be  bound  to  pay  the  charges  of  a 
carrier  he  did  not  select,  unless  excessive;  if  excessive, 
he  would  have  the  choice  of  refusing  the  goods  or  of 
claiming  the  excessive  charges  from  the  seller. 

203.  Conditional  Suppo§e  the  buyer  had  not  seen  the 
sale.  horse,  but  had  only  said:  "I  like  your 
description  so  well  that  if  he  comes  up  to  it,  I'll  take 
him",  still  he  could  not  be  the  buyer's  before  he  had 
accepted  him,  even  if  the  seller's  groom  delivered  him, 
and  the  buyer's  groom  accepted  him,  unless  the  buyer 
had  given  his  groom  special  authority  to  judge  and 
accept  him.  But  if,  after  hearing  the  seller's  descrip- 
tion, the  buyer,  without  seeing  the  horse,  had  said: 
"All  right,  I'll  take  him",  he  would  have  had  to  keep 
him  unless  he  was  ready  to  say  the  description  had  not 
been  just. 

If  the  buyer  had  said:  "I'm  going  away,  but  I'll 
come  and  see  him  within  a  month",  and  the  seller  had 
said:  "All  right,  I'll  keep  him  for  you",  it  is  a  com- 
plex question  whether  the  seller  would  have  been  under 
contract  to  keep  him.     What  really  passed  between  the 

„„,   „   ,  parties  was  that  the  owner  gave  an  option, 

204.  Option.  j  ^i  ^-         •     i  i     ^i,    ^    ^• 

•^  and  the  question  is  how  much  that  option 

was  worth.  If  it  was  worth  more  than  $50,  the  agree- 
ment to  keep  the  horse,  and  agreement  to  go  and  see 
him,  do  not  make  a  contract,  without  writing  or  pay- 
ment on  account.  We  must  distinguish  between  an 
option  and  a  contract  of  sale.  Now  an  option  has  value : 
one  party  has  all  the  advantage,  and  generally  he  should 
pay  for  that  advantage.  He  can  buy  or  not:  if  values 
change,  it  is  a  case  of  heads,  he  wins;  tails,  the  other 
loses.  But  in  a  contract  of  sale,  the  chances  are  even, 
if  other  things  are  even :  for  change  of  value  before  the 
contract  is  completed,  is  as  apt  to  be  on  one  side  as 
the  other.  Accordingly,  the  mere  right  to  buy  goods  if 
wanted  (or  leave  them  alone  if  not  wanted),  is  often 
matter  of  bargain  and  sale — quite  possibly  more  often 
than  goods  themselves,  especially  in  some  classes  of 


§  2o6]  Law  of  Personal-Property  Contracts.  179 

goods.  In  grain,  perhaps  the  option  sales  amount  to 
more  than  the  sales  of  actual  goods.  The  same  may- 
be true  of  some  stocks. 

Suppose  there  had  been  a  defect  in  the 
m^^b^'dTscffi.'  ^i^rse.  Was  the  seller  bound  to  tell  of  it? 
If  questioned,  he  must  answer  honestly, 
if  he  answers  at  all.  But  he  has  a  perfect  right  to  say: 
"  There  is  the  property ;  judge  it  for  yourself."  Here  ap- 
plies the  maxim  of  law:  "Let  the  buyer  look  out  for 
his  own  interests."*  This  applies  specially  to  horse- 
trades,  but  also  to  all  trades  where  the  buyer  has  full 
opportunity  to  examine.  Some  very  honest  people  often 
refuse  to  say  anything  about  their  wares — especially 
their  horses  (For  now  and  then,  perhaps,  a  man  can 
sell  a  horse  without  losing  his  honesty),  because  they 
fear  that  there  may  be  defects  of  which  they  themselves 
are  not  aware. 

Yet  the  principle  of  refusing  to  disclose  a  defect 
when  it  is  known,  is  not  good,  but  it  is  like  something 
discussed  before:  it  is  more  in  the  field  of  honor  than 
in  the  field  of  law.  It  would  be  very  hard  to  enforce 
laws  requiring  it,  and  it  is  unwise  for  the  law  to  attempt 
more  than  it  can  do:  because  failure  is  very  apt  to 
lessen  the  respect  in  which  it  is  important  that  the 
law  be  held. 

But  there  are  cases  in  which  a  man  is  bound  to  tell 
the  whole  story:  an  employee  or  a  person  acting  for 
another  in  any  capacity,  is  always  bound  to  tell  his 
principal  all  essential  facts.  For  instance,  if  a  gentle- 
man sends  his  coachman  to  look  at  a  dealer's  horse, 
the  coachman  is  bound  to  tell  all  he  finds,  while  the 
dealer  is  not. 

A  seller  also,  if  he  warrants  his  wares, 
arrany-       must,  in  self-defence,  tell  how  far  he  war- 
rants them.     Whether  the  contract  of   sale  implies    a 
contract  of  warranty,  is  a  very  complicated  question. 
In  ordinary  cases,  the  two  contracts  are  separate,  and 

*  Caveat  emptor. 


i8o  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§206 

extra  price  is  often  paid  for  warranty;  but  in  danger- 
ous cases,  like  drugs  and  food,  the  courts  would  prob- 
ably imply  warranty  with  sale.  Of  course,  as  often  said, 
the  law  insists  that  there  shall  be  no  fraud,  but  cannot 
always  insist  on  things  being  usable  for  the  purposes  that 
they  are  sold  for.  That  point  opens  up  an  enormous 
number  of  mixed  and  delicate  questions.  Probably 
the  farthest  the  law  could  go  in  any  case,  would  be  to 
punish  fraud  if  proven. 

A   large   and   interesting   class   of   contracts   closely 
allied  to  warranty,  includes  those  of  suretyship — guar- 
anteeing that  the  responsibilities  of  another 

•  ureysip.  person  shall  be  performed.  This,  of  course, 
includes  endorsement,  which  we  have  already  treated 
(163  b).  Even  where  one  has  had  no  real  interest  in  a 
piece  of  negotiable  paper,  if  he  puts  his  name  on  the 
back  of  it,  the  law  assumes  a  right  in  any  subsequent 
holder,  on  giving  prompt  legal  notice,  to  claim  its  value 
from  him.     He  becomes  surety  for  it. 

An  endorsement  is  in  writing;  but  if,  in  our  horse 
case,  the  buyer  had  said  that  his  finances  were  not  in 
good  shape,  and  a  friend  standing  by  had  said:  "Well, 
if  it  turns  out  that  he  can't  pay  you,  I'll  help  him  and 
see  you  made  good,"  the  speaker  would  not  have  been 
bound.  Under  the  Statute  of  Frauds  (82  b)  any  "con- 
tract to  answer  for  the  debt,  default  or  miscarriage  of 
another",  must  be  in  writing,  and  signed  at  least  by 
the  party  who  may  have  to  answer. 

Suretyship  and  warranty  shade  into 
another  large  class  of  contracts  embracing 
all  kinds  of  insurance.  Fidelity  insurance  is  especially 
like  suretyship,  but  also  fire,  marine,  accident,  life, 
plate-glass  and  all  the  rest,  are  of  course  of  the  nature 
of  warranty;  but  the  warrant  extends,  unless  otherwise 
agreed  in  the  policy,  not  necessarily  to  the  full  amount 
of  the  policy,  but  only  to  the  value  of  the  property 
at  the  time  of  loss.  Hence  the  desirability  of  keeping 
the  policy  small,  or  having  it  declare  that  the  amount 
insured  for  shall,  in  case  of  loss,  be  taken  as  the  value 
of  the  property.      Life-insurance  companies,  however, 


§  209  a]      Law  of  Personal-Property  Contracts.  18 1 

are  always  liable  for  the  full  amount  of  their  policies. 

We  come  now  to  the  wide  questions  of 
Bailment,  from  the  French  bailler,  to  de- 
liver. That  is  the  law  term  for  placing  movable  prop- 
erty in  the  possession  of  somebody  not  the  owner,  or 
for  the  relations  arising  from  such  placing  of  any  prop- 
erty. It  will  be  noticed  that  that  is  different  from  the 
delivery  which  changes  ownership.  In  bailment,  the 
owner  and  receiver  are  called,  respectively,  bailor  and 
bailee.  Now  suppose  in  our  horse  case,  the  seller  had 
delivered  the  horse  to  a  railroad  company,  and  they 
had  failed  to  deliver  him  to  the  buyer:  if  lie  had  been 
killed  by  an"  accident  on  their  road,  they  would  have 
had  to  pay  the  seller  for  him,  unless  the  accident  was 
caused  by  "the  Act  of  God  or  the  Pubhc  Enemy". 

Very  early  the  law  made  common  carriers  responsible 
for  the  acts  of  highwaymen,  because  they  were  so 
often  in  collusion  with  them  (202  a).  We  are  defence- 
less against  "the  Act  of  God",  but  the  owner  would 
have  a  chance  of  recovering  the  horse's  value  if  he 
were  taken  by  the  public  enemy:  for  in  the  case  of 
war,  if  the  government  were  to  get  an  indemnity,  it 
would  perhaps  pay  such  private  claims;  and  in  the 
case  of  riot  and  insurrection,  the  citizen  has  a  good 
claim  against  the  state  for  not  preventing  the  trouble 
or  suppressing  it  before  damage  is  done. 

For  any  other  matter  sent  by  freight  or  express,  the 
company's  liability  would  be  the  same  as  for  the  horse. 
The  liabilities  of  common  carriers  are 
enti!hids°o/gfods.  ^hc  Same  for  all  sorts  of  property,  except 
that  they  are  not  responsible  for  deteriora- 
tion in  perishable  goods  like  meat  and  fruit,  unless 
there  is  special  agreement  regarding  time  of  delivery. 
They  can  protect  themselves  by  charging  different  rates 
for  articles  that  difTer  in  durability  or  strength,  and 
they  may  perhaps  altogether  refuse  extra-hazardous 
articles — like  dynamite,  tho  they  do  not  if  they  can  get 
paid  enough. 

Probably  if  a  railway  company  sells  a  ticket  presum- 


1 82  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  209  a 

ably  for  a  particular  train,  it  is  bound  to  provide  a 
seat.  This  wotdd  hardly  hold,  however,  where  a  num- 
ber of  tickets  are  sold  to  be  used  at  pleasure — com- 
mutation tickets  for  instance.  A  passenger  who  can- 
not find  a  seat  in  a  common  car,  may  take  one  in  a 
parlor-car  or  a  sleeping-car  v/ithout  extra  payment, 
until  one  in  an  ordinary  car  is  vacant. 
209  (b).  ••Common  A  "  common  carrier  "  is  a  carrier  for  pay, 
Carrier- defined,     ^f  virtually  anything  that  offers. 

If  one  travels  and  checks  his  trunk,  whether  the 
company  is  liable  for  any  amount  of  value  in  the  trunk, 
is  a  very  doubtful  case,  and  has  often  been  decided 
each  way.  The  weight  of  the  decisions  now  makes  the 
companies  liable  for  ordinary  non-business  baggage,  even 
up  to  the  outfits  of  sportsmen,  and  most  elaborate  cos- 
tumes of  ladies. 

Handbags  are  at  the  risk  of  owners,  so  would  be 
valuables  not  properly  constituting  personal  baggage  in 
trunks. 

The  carrier's  responsibility  for  horses  is  weakened 
(tho  not  always  destroyed)  by  their  being  in  charge  of 
the  owner  or  his  agent. 

209  (c)  Limiting  Confusion  in  the  law  has  resulted  from 
Liability  witiiout  differences  of  opinion  as  to  whether  a  com- 
con  mc .  pany  can  relieve   itself   from   liability  by 

printing  on  tickets  (as  it  always  does)  that  its  liability 
shall  be  restricted  to  a  certain  amount.  While  that 
cannot  make  a  contract  unless  the  passenger  agrees 
to  it,  the  companies'  lawyers  claim  that  in  accepting 
the  ticket,  he  does  agree.  The  question  ought  to  be 
settled  by  statute,  but  probably  the  companies  influ- 
ence the  legislatures  not  to  settle  it  in  one  way,  and 
fear  of  constituents  prevents  the  legislatures  from 
settling  it  the  other  way. 

If  the  passenger  has  not  even  read  what  was  printed 
on  the  ticket,  the  companies  claim  that  one  takes  the 
ticket  on  his  own  risk,  and  ought  to  read  it — in  short, 
that  the  ticket  is  a  sort  of  bill-of -lading. 
209  (d).  Bill-of-  A  bill-of-lading  is  a  carrier's  receipt  for 
Lading,  goods.       Tlicse   werc   issued    long   before 


§  209  /]       Law  of  Personal  Property  Contracts.  183 

passenger-tickets  were — even  when  people  used  to 
travel  only  by  horse  and  carriage;  so  the  law  of  bills- 
of-lading  was  evolved  and  settled  long  before  there 
were  any  passenger-tickets.  A  man  consigning  goods 
to  a  carrier  is  bound  by  anything  on  his  bill-of-lading 
that  is  not  against  the  law;  therefore,  if  he  is  wise, 
he  will  know  what  is  on  it  before  accepting  it.  Per- 
haps the  judges  would  decide  that  passenger-tickets 
are  to  be  put  on  the  same  footing  as  bills-of-lading, 
were  it  not  that  when  a  queue  of  people  i^  waiting 
before  a  ticket-window,  and  the  train  is  soon  to  start, 
it  would  not  do  for  each  one  to  have  to  read  his  ticket 
before  accepting  it.  Moreover,  as  railroads  are  chartered 
for  the  public  convenience,  they  should  not  be  per- 
mitted to  restrict  it  needlessly  by  their  one-sided 
alleged  contracts.  The  general  tendency  of  the  courts, 
however,  is  very  properly  in  favor  of  the  shipper,  as 
the  companies  are  too  apt  to  act  as  masters  of  the 
situation. 
„„„ ,  ,  „.  .  Now  take  another  case  of  one  party's 

209(e).  Hiring.  ■i-r+       f  +  •  j-i  x 

responsibility  tor  returning  the  property 
of  another;  if  the  railroad  company  were  hiring  the 
horse,  and  paying  for  the  use  of  him  instead  of  carrying 
him  somewhere  for  pay,  it  would  still  be  responsible 
to  return  him  unless  prevented  by  the  act  of  God  or 
the  public  enemy:  he  becomes  for  the  time  of  hiring, 
the  company's  horse,  and  it  undertakes  to  return  him 
(or  his  value)  when  the  time  of  hiring   is  past. 

If  while  he  was  hired,  a  thief  had  taken  him  from 
the  stable,  the  hirer  would  have  to  find  him;  or  if  the 
hirer  could  not  find  him,  or  if  the  thief  drove  him  to 
death,  the  hirer  would  be  responsible  to  pay. 
209  r/;.  The  Law  There  is  an  exception  to  this  responsi- 
does  not  require      bility,  wlierc,   at  the  time  of  hiring,  some 

impossibilities.  ■,■,■  •    ,  i-  •.-        ,^  , 

condition  exists  making  it,  m  the  nature 
of  things,  impossible  to  return  the  hired  article — for 
instance,  if,  when  the  horse  is  delivered,  he  has  a  mor- 
tal disease  that  carries  him  off  while  he  is  in  the  bailee's 
hands.  But  if  he  catches  grip  while  in  the  bailee's 
stable,  that  is  the  bailee's  risk. 


184  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  209  / 

If  he  is  vicious  and  runs  away  and  kills  himself,  if 
the  bailee  could  prove  that  he  was  habitually  vicious, 
the  bailee  would  not  be  responsible;  and  if  the  bailor 
knew  it  (as  in  that  case  he  presumably  would),  the 
bailee  could  even  get  damages  for  any  harm  the  horse 
might  do  him. 

If  he  is  burned  up,  that  is  the  bailee's  risk,  too,  but 
of  course  bailees  can  insure  against  it,  or  bailors  can 
when  bailees  are  not  reliable. 

The  same  principle  of  liability  holds  for  all  sorts  of 
property,  if  left  for  the  bailee's  use. 
209  (g).Baiirr,ent        ^^  anything  is  received  without  pay— 
without  consid-      solely  for  the  bailor's  convenience — for  in- 
eration.  stance,  jcwclry  or  a  picture  that  one  does 

not  want  to  store  with  ordinary  furniture,  the  bailee  is 
under  no  responsibility,  except  for  the  grossest  careless- 
ness. Similarly,  if,  as  is  often  the  case,  an  express  com- 
pany deadheads  a  private  package  for  a  man  who  gives 
the  company  much  business,  the  company  is  responsible 
only  for  gross  negligence:  there  has  been  no  considera- 
tion making  a  contract  to  deliver  safely.  But  if,  for 
instance,  a  bailee  had  borrowed  a  horse,  the  bailment 
would  have  been  for  his  own  benefit,  and  he  would  have 
been  responsible — as  responsible  as  if  hiring,  and  more 
responsible  in  honor,  as  the  owner  gets  no  benefit;  and 
accordingly,  a  judge  and  jury  would  be  more  apt  to 
throw  all  the  points  against  the  borrower. 
209  (fi).  Liability  Suppose  the  borrowcr  had  gone  off  for  a 
of  Innkeepers.  driving  tour,  and  stopped  at  a  country  inn, 
the  landlord  putting  the  horse  in  his  stable.  Would 
his  responsibility  to  the  borrower  be  the  same  as  the 
borrower's  when  the  horse  was  in  his  stable?  Prob- 
ably it  v/ould  be  stronger.  Generally  an  innkeeper's 
responsibility  for  the  property  of  his  guests  has  been 
the  same  as  that  of  a  common  carrier:  perhaps,  tho,  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  this  responsibility  would  ex- 
tend to  the  stable. 

Yet  while  the  early  law  made  by  the  decisions  of  the 
judges,  was  as  stated,  many  statutes  have  been  made  by 
legislatures  to  exempt  the  landlord  from  responsibility — 


§  209  i]      Law  of  Personal-Property  Contracts.  185 

for  instance,  for  jewelry  and  valuables  unless  these  are 
specially  put  into  his  hands,  provided  he  gives  notice 
to  that  effect.  In  some  states,  to  relieve  himself  of 
responsibility,  he  must  put  such  things  into  an  iron 
safe.  Perhaps  this  general  tendency  to  relieve  him 
of  responsibility  would  influence  judges  as  far  as  the 
stable. 

Approximately,  the  innkeeper's  responsibility  indi- 
cates the  responsibility  of  all  other  bailees  for  pay,  tho 
as  he  was  one  of  the  earliest  bailees,  and  as  in  early 
times  the  law  could  take  much  less  account  of  circum- 
stances than  it  learned  to  in  the  course  of  its  evolution, 
the  law  is  rather  harder  on  the  innkeeper  than  on  most 
bailees. 

The  rigor  of  the  common  law  with  innkeepers  arose 
from  its  having  taken  shape  at  a  time  when  innkeepers 
were  apt  to  be  in  collusion  with  highwaymen  and  other 
thieves. 

The  innkeeper  is  also  obliged  to  keep  his  place  in 
sanitary  condition  and  furnish  wholesome  food. 

Suppose    the    owner    of    our  horse  had 

(I),     e  ge.      \^Q^^Q^f.Q^  fifty   dollars,   and  had  left  the 

often-aforesaid  horse  as  security :   he  is  not  for  the  time 

as  much  at  the  risk  of  the  lender  of  the  money  (called 

the  pledgee)  as  he  would  be  if  he  hired  or  even  borrowed. 

As  a  pledge,  the  lender  must  return  him  in  good  order, 
if  he  will  permit ;  but  if  he  gets  sick  and  dies,  the  pledgee 
is  not  responsible,  as  he  would  be  in  hiring.  It  must 
be  admitted,  however,  that  horse  cases  are  harder  than 
most  other  cases:  a  horse  is  more  apt  than  a  load  of 
stone,  for  instance,  to  get  sick  and  die,  and  the  diffi- 
culty of  horse  cases  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  I  have 
used  them.  More  changes  can  be  rung  on  a  horse 
than  on  a  load  of  stone. 

Courts  hold  people  regularly  receiving  pledges,  such  as 
pawnbrokers  and  stockbrokers,  to  very  strict  accounta- 
bility, yet  if  a  horse  dies,  or  anything  goes  wrong  with 
other  perishable  property  in  a  bailee's  hands,  even  when 
hired,  and  the  judge  were  to  tell  the  jury  that  in  strict 
law  the  bailee  was  responsible,  and  that  they  must  fix 


1 86  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  2ogi 

the  value,  they  would  be  apt  to  fix  it  pretty  low.  The 
situation  is  one  of  the  many  where  "the  glorious  uncer- 
tainties of  the  law"  ere  specially  uncertain.  But  yet 
there  is  a  general  principle  that  runs  through  it  all,  and 
209  (J).  General  which  would  influence  both  judge  and 
principle  of  Lia-  jury.  The  law  of  bailment  has  been 
biiity  of  Bailees.  Q^olved  froHi  sucli  Varying  circumstances 
that,  in  many  departments,  it  has  hardly  settled  down 
according  to  principles.  It  seems  tending,  tho,  to 
make  the  liability — the  amount  of  care  required  from 
the  bailee,  vary  with  the  advantage  he  derives  from  the 
bailment :  if  he  gets  no  advantage,  as  in  taking  to  accom- 
modate the  bailor,  he  is  responsible  only  if  he  is  grossly 
negligent;  but  if  he  gets  an  advantage,  as  in  borrowing, 
or  hires  an  advantage  worth  paying  for,  as  in  ordinary 
hiring,  he  must  take  good  ordinary  care,  and  that 
will  not  always  save  him ;  but  when  we  come  to  bailees 
who  make  their  living  from  their  bailments,  such  as 
common  carriers,  innkeepers  and  holders  of  pledges, 
they  must  take  all  possible  care,  and  even  then  they 
are  not  always  safe  in  case  of  loss. 

Where  a  party  admits  that  he  owes 
something,  but  there  is  a  dispute  about 
the  amount,  it  is  wise  promptly  to  make  a  tender  of 
what  he  thinks  he  ought  to  pay.  Otherwise  he  could 
not  claim  the  performance  of  any  of  the  agreements 
that  his  opponent  hesitates  about;  and  in  some  states, 
if  a  seller  tries  to  back  out  of  a  contract  for  goods, 
and  the  buyer  makes  him  a  tender,  the  goods  become 
the  buyer's  property  at  that  moment,  even  despite  the 
seller's  wish,  and  only  the  amount  to  be  paid  remains 
to  be  adjudicated. 

Moreover,  if  the  court  should  decide  that  more  was 
owed  than  had  been  tendered,  if  no  tender  has  been 
made,  the  debtor  would  have  to  pay  interest  on  any 
sum  the  court  decides  due,  and  the  costs  of  the  suit. 
If  a  tender  has  been  made,  the  debtor  would  not  have 
to  pay  interest  up  to  the  amount  tendered,  or  any  costs, 
unless  the  court  should  decide  more  owed  than  the  tender. 


§2ii]         Law  of  Personal-Property  Contracts.  187 

But  in  some  cases  the  acceptance  of  any  tender  has 
been  held  to  discharge  the  debt.  * 

A  check  is  not  a  legal  tender.  The  check 
monetin.'""'"^  might  not  be  good.  Pennies  are  legal 
tender  only  up  to  twenty-five  cents.  Sil- 
ver small  change  is  not  legal  tender  for  over  ten  dol- 
lars. Silver  dollars  are  legal  tender  for  any  amount, 
in  the  absence  of  contract  to  the  contrar}^  Silver 
certificates  might  be  expected  to  be  legal  tender  only 
for  public  dues.  Gold  English  sovereigns  are  the  best 
money  in  the  world,  but  foreign  money  is  not  legal 
tender.  Legal  tender  in  America  is  only  American 
money — copper,  nickel  and  small  silver  only  in  the 
small  amounts  stated,  and  gold  coin,  silver  dollars 
and  government  legal-tender  notes  in  unlimited  amounts, 
tho  contract  can  be  made  against  all  but  gold. 

The  reasons  why  some  kinds  of  money  are  legal  ten- 
der, and  others  not,  are:  that  a  debtor  should  not 
be  able  to  force  a  creditor  to  take  a  cartload  of  copper 
for  a  thousand-dollar  debt,  or  a  cartload  of  silver  for 
a  ten-thousand-dollar  one,  if  the^creditor  has  not  been 
wise  enough  to  contract  against  either;  much  less  should 
he  be  obliged  to  take  a  check  that  it  is  possible  the 
bank  may  refuse.  So  it  is  necessary  for  the  law  to 
determine  what  he  shall  take.  This  is  done  by  Con- 
2\Q(b).  Detei--  gress,  of  course :  as  the  Constitution  gives 
mined  by  Congress.  Congress  the  sole  power  to  coin  money,  it 
alone  can  say  what  is  money. 

The  Supreme  Court  has  virtually  decided  that  the 
power  to  coin  money  includes  the  power  to  print  paper 
money,  or  at  least  that  the  power  to  raise  money  in- 
cludes that  of  raising  it  by  issuing  legal-tender  notes; 
but  many  of  the  best  lawyers  still  think  it  does  not. 

211.  Contractual  A  minor  is   incapable   of  making  con- 

Disabilities,  tracts,   except  for  necessities.     Formerly, 

and  perhaps  still  in  some  states,  married  women  can- 
not contract,  and  everywhere  idiots  are  unable  to. 

If,  for  instance,  a  minor's  doctor  recommends  him  to 
ride  horseback,  and  he   refuses  to  pay   for  a  horse  he 


i88  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§211 

has  hired,  a  jury  would  have  to  decide  whether,  con- 
sidering his  health  and  circumstances,  the  horse  could 
be  called  a  necessity.  Should  the  jury  agree  that  the 
212,  Some  limits  l^o^se  was  a  necessity,  as  there  was  no  con- 
of  Quantum  tract  (the  hirer  being  a  minor),  the  owner 

still  coiild  recover  for  the  hire,  on  the 
ground  that  anybody  who  supplies  a  minor  with  a 
necessity,  may  recover  "what  it  was  worth" — Quantiim 
valebat  (189).  This  principle  of  qtianttim  valebat  is 
not  applied  only  to  supplying  minors  altho  they  can- 
not contract,  but  it  applies  when  an5rthing  really  making 
212 ra;.  Emich.  an  "enrichment"  is  supplied,  even  by  mis- 
'"^"^-  take.     Tho  in  ordinary  language  a  minor 

or  anybody  is  not  "enriched"  by  riding  a  horse,  he  is 
in  the  legal  sense,  if  it  does  him  good.  Even  if  it  does 
not,  he  would  still  have  to  pay  for  it,  if  good  judges 
had  recommended  it. 

But  if  he  had  been  supplied  with  something  harmful, 
as  too  much  whiskey,  for  instance,  the  seller  could  not 
recover. 

The  question  of  quantum  valebat  is  constantly  aris- 
ing where  things  have  been  furnished  not  under  con- 
tract, but  by  mistake.  Once  money  was  paid  an  English 
admiral  by  mistake.  He  went  on  a  long  spree  with  it, 
and  successfully  defended  a  demand  for  its  return, 
on  the  ground  that  it  had  not  "enriched"  him  any. 
There  are  many  good  judges  however,  who  doubt  if 
that  was  good  law. 

If  an  owner  who  had  agreed  to  sell  anything,  wanted 
to  back  out  on  the  ground  that  there  was  no  contract 
because  the  buyer  was  a  minor,  probably  the  courts 
would  not  excuse  him  if  the  minor  sued  through  a 
guardian  for  enforcement.  The  principle  would  seem 
to  be  in  accordance  with  the  maxim  that  "no  man  has 
a  right  to  take  advantage  of  his  own  wrong".  The 
seller  in  the  supposed  case,  being  of  age,  is  presumxcd 
to  know  what  he  has,  and  has  not,  a  right  to  do.  He 
has  no  right  to  contract  with  a  minor  (unless  for  a 
necessity,   under   his    health   and   circumstances)    and 


§  213]        ^o,w  of  Personal  Property  Contracts.  189 

therefore  cannot  take  advantage  of  his  being  a  minor, 
to  set  aside  the  contract. 

But  suppose  for  some  reason  which  we  need  not 
take  the  trouble  to  invent,  a  minor  wishes  to  set  aside 
a  contract,  has  he  not  been  as  wrong  to  go  into  it  as 
the  adult:   so  should  he  have  any  more  right  to  set  it 

aside?  The  law  is  pretty  decided  that  he 
g3.Jheiaw^pro-     ghould.     It  is  the  special  province  of  the 

law,  so  far  as  it  can,  to  protect  the  weak. 
The  minor  is  in  special  danger  of  being  led  by  adults 
into  unfair  contracts,  so  he  rightly  has  the  power  to 
set  them  aside.  The  adult,  on  the  other  hand,  is  left 
to  take  care  of  himself,  and  is  all  the  better  for  the 
responsibility.  True,  as  already  said,  the  law  cannot 
attempt  to  discriminate  between  strong  men  and  weak 
ones,  but  it  can  tell  the  difference  between  people  over 
twenty-one  years  old,  and  those  under. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

LAW   OF   CONTRACTS   FOR   PERSONAL   RELATIONS. 

If  A,  being  away  from  his  stable,  sells 
^^"'^^'  a  horse  to  B,  and  on  coming  home  is  met 

by  his  groom,  who  says:  "Here's  a  hundred  dollars 
that  I  just  got  from  C  for  that  horse  you  told  me  to 
sell,  and  he  has  taken  him  away",  whose  horse  he  is 
depends  upon  whose  horse  he  was  when  the  groom 
sold  him  to  C  If  A  had  sold  him  to  B  before  the 
groom  sold  him  to  C,  he  was  B's.  A  could  not  give  C 
any  title  to  him  that  A  did  not  have  himself.  But 
if  A's  man  had  sold  him  to  C  before  A  sold  him  to  B, 
A  had  no  title  to  sell  B. 

A's  man  could  give  B  as  good  a  title  as 

214  (o}-  Author-  "^  .  °. 

t zed  acts  bind        A  had,  if  A  had  made  him  his  agent  to  do 

pnncipal.  ^^         g^^    -^    ^    j^^^    ^^^    ^^-^    ^^    j^-^    g^^_ 

stantiaUy.  "Sell  that  horse  when  you  can  get  $ioo  for 
him",  but  had  only  said  substantially:  "I  think  I'll  sell 
that  horse  when  I  can  get  $ioo  for  him",  he  had  not 
made  the  groom  his  agent  to  sell  the  horse,  and  no 
agent  can  do  more  than  he  is  authorized  to  do,  unless 
the  principal  has,  carelessly  or  otherwise,  given  the 
third  party  good  reason  to  believe  that  the  agent  had 
the  necessary  authority. 

Again,  suppose  A  had  given  instructions  to  sell  the 
horse  for  $ioo,  and  the  groom  had  given  C  an  option 
(203)  on  him  for  a  month.  A's  instructions  did  not 
give  the  groom  the  right  to  tie  the  horse  up  for  a  month, 
so  that  A  could  not  take  a  better  price,  unless  the 
groom  was  sure  of  the  sale  at  the  end ;    or  perhaps 

190 


§  214  c]    Lciw  of  Contracts  for  Personal  Relations.         191 

for  that  long,  even  if  he  was  sure,  because  the  horse 
might  get  sick  or  die  meanwhile. 

But  if  A  had  said:  "Do  anything  you  please  with 
him  that  will  put  me  to  no  expense,  but  don't  bring 
me  less  than  $100",  that  would  probably  have  given 
the  groom  a  right  to  give  an  option,  if  he  honestly  ex- 
pected that  it  would  lead  to  a  sale :  yet  it  was  rather 
risky.  Most  courts  would  probably  hold  such  an 
option  good,  if  the  consideration  for  it  were  good. 
2}\(b),  Agent  ^^  ^^^^  Consideration  for  the    option  on 

liable  for  exceed-    the  horsc  was  held  to  be  good    and  the 

ing  his  authority,  ,-  ■.       -tr  111  ,  %    , 

Option  itself  were  held  not  good  because 
the  agent  had  exceeded  his  authority,  the  remedy 
could  only  be  through  damages  by  suing  the  agent — 
if  he  had  enough  to  pay  with:  a  principal  can  be  sued 
only  for  what  he  has  authorized  an  agent  to  do,  or 
that  which  through  negligence  he  had  permitted  his 
agent  to  assume  authority  to  do,  after  having  placed 
the  agent  in  a  position  in  which  he  might  deceive  the 
public. 

2H(c).  Principal  As  already  intimated,  an  agent  can  do 
tZ"dptt°XT''  ^^^  ^^^^  ^^^  principal  has  given  a  third 
good  reason  to  be-  party  good  rcason  to  believe  the  agent 
lie^e  authorised,  j^^g  ^^^^  authorized  to  do :  for  instance, 
if  A  had  said  to  C  so  lately  that  A  could  not  be  rea- 
sonably supposed  to  change  his  mind:  "I  always  let 
my  man  buy  and  sell  my  horses  as  he  thinks  best:  I'm 
so  buried  in  my  books  that  I  don't  attemipt  to  know 
anything  about  the  stable" — if  A  said  that,  he  would 
be  estopped  (190)  from  denying  it  to  C,  after  C  had 
acted  on  the  faith  of  it. 

Nor  is  the  principle  of  estoppel  the  only  one  or  the 
main  one,  that  forces  a  man  to  abide  by  the  authorized 
acts  of  his  agent. 

Now  in  the  horse  case,  suppose  A  was  not  the  real 
owner,  but  merely  the  agent  for  the  owner,  and  the 
owner  disapproved  A's  selHng  him,  whether  the  court 
would  enforce  the  sale,  would  depend,  as  already  said, 
upon  whether  the  owner  had  led  the  buyer  to  believe 
that  A  had  the  authority;    or  if  not,  upon  whether  A 


192  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§214(7 

had  exceeded  his  authority,  cr  whether,  merely,  the 
owner  had  changed  his  mind  after  giving  A  authority. 
A  principal  is  always  bound  by  the  act  of  his  agent, 
unless  the  agent  exceeds  his  authority. 
214  w.  Agency  There  is  also  Agency  by  necessity.     A 

through  necessity,  ^.jfg  ^nd  children  are  a  husband  and 
father's  agents  to  supply-,  the  family  with  necessities 
according  to  his  means,  and  so  can  render  him  liable; 
or  if  in  accident  a  bystander  takes  the  place  of  a  dis- 
abled agent,  the  principal  is  liable  for  consequences. 
Should  a  man  rimning  a  launch  become  ill,  and  a  pas- 
senger take  the  wheel,  if  he  wrongly  ran  down  another 
boat,  the  owner  of  the  launch  woiild  be  liable,  tho  he 
had  not  engaged  him.  It  is  an  old  maxim  of  the  law 
that  he  who  does  an  act  through  another,  does  it  him- 
self.* 

g^^^^^_       If   the   owner   of   the   horse   had   said: 
not  make  ann         "Sell  him  for  $ioo",  and  the  agent  had 

profit  for  hirrrself.     ^^^^  ^-^    ^^^^^  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^^^  ^^  yjOV^d  haVC 

no  right  to  keep  the  difference:  an  agent  is  simply  his 
principal's  self,  as  far  as  business  between  them  is 
concerned. 

To  leave  horse-trading  for  a  moment,  suppose  an 
agent  were  sent  to  buy  a  piece  of  land  on  which  the 
principal  was  going  to  make  an  improvement  that 
would  greatly  raise  the  value  of  land  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, and  the  agent  bought  some  neighboring  land  on 
speculation  himself.  He  could  not  keep  it  if  his  prin- 
cipal wanted  it  at  the  price.  An  agent  in  a  transac- 
tion simply  represents  his  principal  in  everything  con- 
nected with  it.  It  would  be  the  agent's  duty  to  tell 
his  principal  about  the  neighboring  land:  so  far  as 
everything  connected  with  a  principal's  business  is  con- 
cerned, an  agent's  mind  should  be  simply  his  princi- 
pal's mind,  and  his  pocket  his  principal's  pocket. 

Should  an  agent  receive  bribes  to  buy  from  particular 
people,  the  law  would  give  them  to  his  principal,  and 
in  some  cases  would  punish  the  agent.     Cooks  and  coach- 

*  Qui  facit  per  alium,  facit  per  se. 


§  214  g:]  ^ci""^  of  Contracts  for  Personal  Relations.  193 

men  acting  as  agents  for  the  purchase  of  suppHes,  often 
take  commissions  on  them,  and  pay  high  prices,  and 
waste  much  in  order  to  profit  by  needless  purchases. 
All  this  they  .are  frequently  tempted  into  by  com- 
peting dealers.  The  act  is  criminal  in  both  parties, 
and  the  dealers  being  generally  the  more  intelligent, 
deserve  double  blame.  Employers  who  would  rather 
endure  the  loss  than  take  the  trouble  to  prevent  it, 
nevertheless  owe  it  to  the  community  to  ferret  out 
and  prosecute  such  cases.  Occasional  examples  made 
of  them  would  obliterate  a  great  and  growing  abuse. 
If  an  agent  known  to  habitually  represent  a  prin- 
cipal, buys  a  thing  at  a  higher  price  than  the  principal 
has  authorized,  the  principal  is  bound,  tho  of  course 
with  right  to  recover  from  the  agent.  Hence  on  mis- 
trusting or  discontinuing  a  purchasing  agent,  it  is  very 
important  to  give  notice  to  people  who  have  known 
him  in  that  capacity. 

214  r/;  The  supe-  ^^  ^°^  seldom  happens  that  agent  and 
rior  is  generally  principal  are  both  responsible.  We  can 
imagine  many  cases  where  the  other  party 
to  the  contract  might  in  reason  sue  the  agent,  and 
then  the  agent  sue  the  principal,  or  vice  versa;  but 
it  is  a  maxim  that  "the  law  abhors  litigation",  and  in 
most  such  cases,  the  judge  would  order  the  first  plain- 
tiff to  sue  the  last  defendant  direct.  This  fact  and 
the  fact  that  the  principal  is  generally  "good"  for 
damages,  while  the  agent  generally  is  not,  naturally 
make  the  custom  as  it  is.  "Let  the  superior  answer"* 
is  good  sense  and  good  law.  But  there  is  another  prin- 
ciple of  law  working  in  the  same  direction:  under  the 
maxim  already  quoted — that  whoever  does  a  thing  by 
means  of  ano*ther,  does  it  himself,  the  agent  is  regarded 
somewhat  as  a  mere  involuntary  instrument,  and  there- 
fore not  responsible. 

A  principal  is  responsible  for  his  agent's 

2H(g)-  even  for  ^     ■  -c  ■.  ■  c 

wrong  done  in        wroug-domg,  it  it  occurs  lu  coursc  oi  any- 

7utiel°^ '""^'"^     thing  that   the    principal  has    authorized 

his  agent  to  do,  but  not  in  anything  the 

*  Respondeat  superior. 


194  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§2i4g 

agent  does  outside  of  his  authority.  For  instance,  a 
servant  was  throwing  snow  from  the  roof  of  a  house 
in  New  York.  He  had  not  given  any  notice  to  passers- 
by,  and  killed  a  man.  The  master  had  to  pay  damages 
to  the  man's  family.  Note  in  this  case  that  it  was  not 
necessary  that  the  master  should  specifically  order  the 
servant  to  throw  off  the  snow.  Agents  such  as  ser- 
vants and  employees'  generally,  have  certain  regular 
and  ordinary  duties;  whatever  they  do  in  direct  con- 
nection with  those  duties,  their  employers  are  respon- 
sible for.  That  may  be  hard  on  a  man  who,  through 
bad  luck,  gets  hold  of  a  careless  or  wicked  servant, 
but  it  is  the  master's  bad  luck,  and  not  the  victim's. 
But  servants  are  hardly  a  question  of  luck.  The  law 
does  well  to  hold  a  man  responsible  for  care  in  selecting 
his  servants  or  any  other  agents.  An  employer  of  many 
men  could  do  great  harm  in  being  careless  whom  he 
sets  to  shoveling  snow  from  roofs,  or  driving  horses 
through  the  streets,  or  running  elevators  or  engines. 
2\^(h).  which  At  first  it  may  appear  that  if  the  agent 

fefJrleneliliy"^'  ^ocs  wrong,  it  would  be  fairer  to  sue 
requires,  him  than  to   sue  the  principal.     But  it 

would  not  generally  be  fairer  to  the  sufferer,  because 
generally  the  agent  is  the  man  of  inferior  ability,  and 
therefore  of  inferior  wealth.  But  if  he  has  any  money, 
the  sufferer  may  sue  him  if  he  prefers.  People  often 
employ  brokers  and  commission  merchants  for  the 
very  purpose  of  keeping  themselves  in  the  background. 
In  such  a  case,  the  other  party  to  the  deal  must  take 
his  risks  with  the  agent.  The  agent  is  personally  liable 
when  he  does  not  disclose  his  principal. 

If  an  agent  employs  subagents,  he  is  usually  respon- 
sible for  them — a  contractor  doing  work  for  another 
man,  is  generally  responsible  for  his  workmen. 
214  (i).  Both  prin-  Yet  if  ouc  makes  another  his  agent  to 
//a6/e/n  wronff-  commit  a  murdcr  or  robbery,  the  respon- 
doing.  sibility  does  not  slip  past  the  agent  and 

rest  entirely  upon  the  principal.  In  all  wrong-doing, 
agent  and  principal  are  both  responsible,  where  the 
agent  acts  under  instructions. 


§215]      Law  of  Contracts  jor  Personal  Relations.  195 

2H(j).  Classes  of  Anybody  appointed  by  another  to  do 
<^9^"^^-  anything  for  him,  is  his  agent  to  do  that 

thing;  generally  attorneys,  commission-merchants,  bro- 
kers, auctioneers,  salesmen,  clerks,  domestic  servants, 
and  any  employee — so  far  as  concerns  what  one  was  em- 
ployed to  do:  anybody,  in  short,  who  does  anything  at 
the  order  or  request  of  anybody  else,  is  his  agent,  tho 
agents  are  generally  employed  to  contract,  while  serv- 
ants seldom  are. 

,  A  partner  is  more  than  an  agent  for  the 

other  partner  or  partners :  in  dealing  with 
outsiders,  each  partner  has  all  the  powers  of  an  owner. 
These  powers  are  limited  of  course  to  the  partnership 
business.  A  man  may  be  partner  in  several  concerns: 
of  course  his  partner  in  only  one,  would  not  control 
anything  in  another. 

But  in  case  of  disagreement  among  the  partners  of 
any  firm,  a  firm  can  limit  a  partner's  authority  by  giving 
notice,  and  anybody  having  such  notice  would  deal 
with  a  partner  at  his  own  risk. 

But  when  partners  disagree,  and  a  person  dealing 
with  them  has  had  no  notice,  when  one  partner  has 
spoken,  the  rest  must  abide  by  what  he  has  said.  If 
he  runs  them  in  debt,  each  one  is  liable  to  the  full 
extent  for  everything  any  one  partner  may  do  in  rela- 
tion to  the  partnership  property.  So  inclusive  is  this, 
that  if  A  owns  say  one  tenth  in  a  partnership  property, 
and  B  owns  the  rest,  and  B  is  rich  in  other  things 
while  A  has  nothing  else,  A  can  run  into  debt  for  a 
lot  of  worthless  things,  and  B  will  have  to  pay  for 
them.  This  presupposes  of  course  that  the  two  appear 
before  the  world  as  partners,  and  the  worthless  things 
are  sold  to  them  in  good  faith  for  the  partnership 
account.  It  is  very  foolish,  then,  for  a  rich  man  to 
take  a  poor  one  into  partnership,  unless  he  knows 
him  very  well:  for  ordinarily  a  man's  whole  estate 
is  at  his  partner's  mercy. 

Yet  a  limit  to  the  liability  of  any  partner  can  be 
made  by  advertising  the  amount  that  he  has  put  in,  and 


196  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§215 

stating  that  the  HabiHty  is  limited  to  that  amount. 
The  method  varies  in  the  different  states,  however, 
and  a  lawyer  should  be  consulted. 

To  constitute  a  partnership,  people  must  be  asso- 
ciated in  continuous  business  for  the  purpose  of  making 
money.  An  unincorporated  club  or  a  joining  of  forces 
for  a  specific  job  not  taking  a  long  time,  does  not  con- 
stitute a  partnership. 

When  partnership  is  dissolved,  the  liability  of  each 
partner  for  the  others'  acts,  is  terminated  by  notice 
of  dissolution,  to  people  with  whom  the  firm  has  regu- 
larly dealt,  and  by  newspaper  advertisement  to  others. 

.  In  scientific  language,   almost  any  act 

that  one  does  for  the  satisfaction  of  another 
is  called  a  service.  Pleading  a  case  or  singing  a  song 
is  in  that  sense  a  service.  For  that  matter,  the  law 
calls  all  persons  servants  who  are  in  the  employment 
of  others  for  salary;  the  President  himself  is  sometimes 
called  the  servant  of  the  people. 

In  a  contract  for  any  sort  of  service,  from  that  of  a 
bootblack  up  to  that  of  the  highest  artist,  for  any 
period — say  for  a  week — the  employee  is  bound  to  give 
good  service  and  good  behavior  for  a  week,  and  the 
employer  is  bound  to  give  decent  treatment  and  honest 
pay  for  a  week.  If  either  defaults,  it  releases  the  other, 
and  the  defaulter  is  of  course  liable  for  damages.  Yet 
among  employers  and  servants  both,  there  is  a  good 
deal  ot  ignorance  and  stupidity  about  this  matter. 
216  (a).  Discharge  ^hcre  are  not  a  few  employees  of  all 
for  cause  stops  pay  kinds  who  think  they  can  be  lazy  and 
of  term,  (disagreeable,  and  still  get  their  pay — even 
going  to  the  point  of  asking  pay  for  the  full  time 
agreed  upon,  when  they  have  been  deservedly  dis- 
charged before  it  had  elapsed.  In  such  a  case,  it  is 
always  a  good  citizen's  duty  to  fight  even  petty  injus- 
tice, rather  than  yield  because  yielding  is  less  trouble. 
Only  in  that  way  can  the  public  idea  of  justice  be 
kept  high. 


§  2i6  c]    Law  of  Contracts  for  Personal  Relations.        197 

But  of  course  in  quarrels  between  em- 
MhoutcaustT  ployers  and  employees,  the  employees  are 
leaving  for  cause,  ]-,y  j^q  means  always  in  the  wrong:  em- 
ployers sometimes  maltreat  servants,  or 
discharge  them  when  they  really  are  not  to  blame. 
In  such  cases  the  employee's  right  is  to  get  wages  for 
the  full  time  agreed  upon,  even  if  no  service  is  rendered 
for  the  portion  of  it  after  the  discharge.  But  it  is  the 
duty  of  an  employee  to  try  to  get  work,  even  if  wrong- 
fully discharged,  and  any  salary  received  for  service 
during  the  contractual  period,  must  be  applied  in  reduc- 
tion of  the  claim  on  the  employer.  The  same  prin- 
ciples hold  between  mechanics  and  clerks  and  agents 
and  their  employers,  as  between  domestic  servants  and 
their  employers. 

According  to  the  general  principle  already  given,  if 
the  servants  in  a  house,  or  mechanics  in  a  factory,  are 
paid  by  the  week,  and  one  of  them  is  found  to  slouch 
or  scamp  his  work,  the  employer  is  not  bound  to  keep 
him  the  full  time,  nor  can  the  dehnquent  claim  wages 
for  the  full  time  under  the  contract.  The  contract 
means  honest  work  for  honest  dollars:  if  he  does  not 
render  the  work,  he  is  not  entitled  to  the  dollars. 

If  the  employer  turns  him  off  Wednesday  for  cause, 
the  law  does  not  suppose  that  he  might  have  worked 
honestly  Thursday,  Friday  and  Saturday.  The  law 
always  judges  people  by  their  records:  even  if  a  man 
with  a  good  record  commits  a  crime,  the  law  is  more 
mercifiil  to  him  than  to  a  man  with  a  bad  record. 
216  cc;  Both  ^^  ^^  employee's  record  is  good,  but  an 

bound  for  the  en-    employer  finds  he  does  not  need  him  as 
tire  term.  ^^^^  ^^  j^^  Contracted  for,  it  is  the  em- 

ployer's loss:    he  should  engage  for  only  practicable 
terms. 

If  the  employee  is  offered  higher  wages  to  leave  a  fair 
employer  before  his  term  is  out,  he  is  bound  to  stay 
his  term.  In  the  absence  of  special  agreement,  the 
term  is  usually  the  period  for  which  payment  is  made — 
day,  week,  month,  year:  the  special  customs  of  the 
trade  may   affect  the   question.     If   a  servant   leaves 


198  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  216  c 

without  just  cause  before  the  end  of  the  term,  he  is 
not  strictly  entitled  to  any  pay  on  account  of  that  term, 
tho  the  judge  would  probably  give  him  a  quantum 
meruit  (189),  but  if  his  departure  had  caused  his  em- 
ployer serious  inconvenience  and  loss,  the  judge  would 
probably  deduct  part  or  all  of  the  quantum  meruit  to 
make  the  employer-  gpod,  or  might  even  award  him 
damages. 

The  case  of  the  servant  leaving,  just  cited,  might  be 
a  very  iinportant  one:  for  instance,  if  he  were  an  expert 
engineer  or  electrician  or  life-insurance  actuary,  whose 
place  it  might  not  be  easy  to  fill. 

217.  Remedies  for  If  Contracts  for  service  are  broken  in 
Broken  Contracts,  essential  particulars — not  merely  in  for- 
mal ones,  the  law  will  either  issue  an  injunction  against 
the  employee  leaving,  if  his  staying  were  desired  by 
the  employer  (not  a  very  likely  case,  at  least  in  the 
lower  grades),  or  the  law  would  give  damages,  or,  if 
the  case  admits,  combine  both. 

If  the  contract  is  not  for  personal  service,  but,  we 
will  say,  for  manufacturing  goods,  or  building  a  house, 
the  court  would  probably  order  "specific  performance", 
as  well  as  give  damages  for  delay:  it  tries  to  meet 
the  wishes  of  the  aggrieved  person,  as  far  as  justice 
will  permit. 

We  have  now  gone  through  the  principal  kinds  of  con- 
tracts, which  are  Sale,  Warranty,  Surety,  Insurance, 
Bailments,  Agency,  Partnership  and  Service. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

LAW   OF   SOME   QUASI-CONTRACTUAL   RELATIONS. 

Now  we  come  to  a  set  of  relations  including  those  of 
the  various  kinds  of  trustees  who  manage  property  for 
the  benefit  of  others.  These  relations  sometimes  arise 
under  contract,  and  sometimes  by  mere  appointment 
and  acceptance.  We  can,  however,  see  something  like 
a  contract  in  the  latter  case:  there  would  seem  to  be 
consideration  on  both  sides — giving  the  position  with 
its  emoluments  (if  any)  on  one  side,  and  the  perform- 
ance of  the  duties,  on  the  other.  Accepting  a  position 
is  certainly  undertaking  to  perform  its  duties.  Accord- 
ingly, for  symmetry's  sake,  perhaps  we  may  call  these 
relations  quasi-contractual  ones,  altho  that  term  does 
not  apply  in  strict  legal  usage:  under  it  they  are  gen- 
erally called  fiduciary. 

218.  Trusteeship  In  A  trustee  of  property  is  not  merely  a 
&6"^''2i'  representative  of  another  person  or  party, 

as  an  agent  is :  he  really  owns  the  property  for  a  longer 
or  shorter  time,  but  owns  it  for  another's  benefit. 

The  principal  classes  of  trustees  are  directors  of  cor- 
porations (who  are  trustees  for  the  stockholders) ; 
assignees  of  bankrupts;  administrators  of  estates  when 
there  are  no  wills;  executors  of  wills,  guardians  of 
minors,  and  trustees  without  special  names,  who  may 
be  appointed  for  hundreds  of  purposes. 

If  a  trustee  does  not  pay  over  what  is  entrusted  to 
him,  or  take  reasonable  care  of  it,  he  is  liable  to  have 
his  own  property  sold  to  make  up  any  losses.     He  is 

199 


200  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§219 

-  .  ,  also  liable  to  prosecution  for  "Breach  of 
Trust ' ' ,  which  is  a  crime  punishable  with 
imprisonment.  This  crime  is  perpetrated  vastly 
oftener  than  inexperienced  observers  have  any  idea  of, 
especially  regarding  the  property  of  women  and  children ; 
but  it  is  very  often  hushed  up,  because  it  is  peculiarly 
apt  to  happen  between  friends  and  relatives — trustees 
naturally  being  selected  among  them. 

The  best  defence  yet  evolved  against  breach  of  trust, 
is  making  a  "Trust  Company"  a  trustee,  instead  of  an 
individual ;  tho  probably  it  is  best  to  associate  with  the 
company,  an  individual  friend  of  the  ''cestui  que  trust", 
as  the  beneficiary  is  called.  Then  instead  of  one  man 
secretly  yielding  to  temptation,  it  would  generally 
be  necessary  for  all  the  officers  to  yield  together,  with 
the  knowledge  and  connivance  of  each  other. 

220,  Assignees  of  ^^  important  class  of  trustees  are  the 
Bankrupts.  assignees     of    bankrupt     estates.     When, 

through  misfortune  (or  oftener  through  lack  of  economy 
or  energy  or  some  of  the  other  qualities  essential  to 
ability),  a  man's  debts  exceed  the  value  of  his  property, 
it  is  almost  useless  for  him  to  go  on  in  his  own  way, 
because  he  is  apt  only  to  make  things  worse.  It  is 
usual  then  to  declare  him  bankrupt  {bench-broken,  from 
an  ancient  custom  in  the  Italian  exchanges  of  breaking 
the  bench  of  a  banker  who  had  gotten  into  such  a  situ- 
ation), and  for  him,  either  voluntarily  or  through  the 
action  of  a  court,  to  assign  his  property  to  a  trustee 
who  will  dispose  of  it  and  pay  the  creditors  such  por- 
tion of  their  claims  as  it  will  yield.  After  the  settle- 
ment, such  as  it  is,  is  made,  the  assignee  gives  an  account 
of  it  to  a  court,  who,  unless  there  is  evidence  of  fraud 
on  the  part  of  the  bankrupt ,  discharges  him  from  farther 
liability. 

220(a)  Justice  ^^  ^^^^  sight,  this  may  not  seem  fair  to 

of  discharging  the  Creditors;  but  it  is  a  great  deal  fairer 
Baniirupts.  ^-^^^  letting  the  bankrupt  go  on  making 

worse  ducks  and  drakes  than  before,  and  so  insuring 


§221  a]  Law  oj  Some  Quasi-Contractual  Relations.      201 

that  the  creditors'  shares  would  be  smaller  still.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  the  bankrupt's  bad  condition  were 
temporary^the  result  of  some  special  misfortune,  in 
case  he  is  relieved  of  so  much  of  his  debts  as  he  is  not 
at  the  moment  in  condition  to  pay,  he  can  take  a 
fresh  start  with  lighter  burdens;  and  if  he  really  has 
ability,  there  is  nothing  in  his  bankruptcy  to  prevent 
his  paying  his  deficit  when  he  makes  money  enough 
to,  as  indeed  happens  in  an  occasional  case.  But 
if  a  man  lacks  ability,  it  is  best  that  his  creditors  should 
take  the  property  he  holds,  and  he  find  the  place  for 
which  Nature  made  him,  under  the  guidance  of  some 
man  who  has  ability. 

We  now  come  to  trustees  for  the  estates  of  deceased 
persons.  At  the  outset  we  must  note  a  difference  in 
the  ways  real  estate  and  personal  property  are  disposed 
of  at  the  owner's  death. 

221.  Administrators.  ^^  "^  ^^^^  is  left  making  a  different  dis- 
Devoiutionof  Intes-  position,  the  real  estate,  subject  to  dower 
aeesaes.  ^^  courtesy  rights  (82  g),  at  once  becomes 

the  property  of  the  heirs,  while  personal  property  is 
held  in  trust  by  somebody  appointed  by  the  court, 
called  an  administrator,  for  the  payment  of  funeral 
expenses  and  debts,  and  then  for  the  division  of  any 
balance  that  may  remain,  among  the  relatives  or  others 
entitled  to  it. 

This  does  not  imply  that  a  family  must  live  off  the 
real  estate  until  all  the  debts  are  paid:  there  might  be 
real  estate  in  litigation  that  could  not  be  used  in  years. 
In  such  cases,  the  court  makes  from  the  personal  prop- 
erty, such  allowances  for  the  support  of  the  survivors 
as  the  estate  seems  to  justify,  and  even  leaves  some- 
thing to  the  discretion  of  the  administrator. 
221  (a)  Rights  of  Rights  of  inheritance,  when  there  is  no 
relatives ofintes-  will,  Vary  in  the  different  states;  but  gen- 
erally, rights  of  dower  and  courtesy  being 
allowed  for,  the  real  estate  at  once,  without  any  for- 
mality, vests  equally  in  the  heirs.  "Heirs"  is  really  a 
technical  term,  meaning  the  persons  who  take  real  estate 


202  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§221  a 

when  there  is  no  will.  They  are  the  nearest  blood-rela- 
tives of  the  same  degree — -children  or  the  descend- 
ants of  deceased  children  if  there  are  any;  if  not,  parents 
if  there  are  any;  if  not,  sisters  and  brothers  or  the 
descendants  of  deceased  ones  if  there  are  any;  and 
so  on,  out  to  remote  degrees  of  relationship.  The 
children  of  a  deceased  person  who  would  take  if  living, 
divide  equally  the  share  that  the  parent  would  have 
had.  Of  personal  estate,  husband  or  wife  usually 
takes  a  third,  or  a  half  where  there  are  no  living  de- 
scendants; and  the  rest  is  divided  like  real  estate. 
222.  Executors.  When  there  is  a  will,  matters  are  settled 

^i'lS"  up  by  one  or  more  persons  usually  ap- 

pointed in  the  will,  and  confirmed  by  the  court,  called 
executors.  There  is  a  very  great  advantage  in  this:  a 
man  who  has  accumulated  and  managed  property  is 
apt  to  be  a  much  better  judge  of  who  would  better 
manage  it  for  his  family,  than  a  court  who  knows  nothing 
about  it,  and  is  apt  to  appoint  as  administrators  near 
relatives  who  may  lack  the  necessary  business  qualities. 

Sometimes  a  testator  forgets  to  name  executors,  or 
those  he  names  may  not  survive  him.  In  such  cases, 
the  court  appoints  administrators  with  the  will  attached. 

The  usual  essentials  of  a  will  good  in  law,  are  that  it 
shall  be  in  writing,  state  the  testator's  desires  clearly, 
and  be  as  simple  as  possible.  If  it  is  intended  to  give 
a  wife  property  to  take  the  place  of  her  dower  rights, 
it  should  clearly  say  that  the  property  is  given  in 
place  of  dower  (or  to  a  husband,  in  place  of 
courtesy) ;  it  should  name  all  persons  naturally  apt 
to  inherit,  even  any  that  it  may  intend  to  cut  off, 
so  that  they  will  not  be  supposed  to  be  over- 
looked; it  should  be  dated,  and  state  that  the 
testator  revokes  all  other  wills  previously  made  by 
him;  and  it  should  be  signed  in  presence  of  two 
witnesses  not  otherwise  named  in  it,  who  them- 
selves sign  a  statement  written  on  it  that  it 
was  signed  in  their  presence,  pronounced  by  the 
testator  as  his  (or  her)  last  will  and  testament,  and 
that,   at    the   testator's   request,  they  have   signed  it 


§  222  a]  Law  of  Some  Quasi-Contractual  Relations.      203 

in  his   (or  her)  presence,  and  in  the  presence  of  each 
other.     They  should  also  append  their  addresses. 

If  it  is  not  said  in  the  will  that  it  revokes  all  pre- 
vious wills,  and  a  previous  one  is  found,  the  early  one's 
provisions  must  be  carried  out  so  far  as  they  can  be 
without  upsetting  provisions  of  the  new  one.  For  in- 
stance, if  the  new  will  names  bequests  to  A,  B  and  C, 
and  an  old  unrevoked  will  is  found,  leaving  bequests  to 
E,  F  and  G,  if  there  is  money  left  after  A,  B  and  C  are 
paid,  E,  F  and  G  will  be  paid,  or  paid  pro  rata  as  the 
money  holds  out,  and  these  payments  would  be  at  the 
expense  of  such  persons  as  would  otherwise  have  the 
money  under  the  last  will. 

If  a  will  is  known  to  have  been  made,  but  cannot  be 
found,  if  it  can  be  proved  that  the  testator  did  not 
destroy  it,  and  wished  it  enforced  (for  instance,  if  it 
was  accidentally  destroyed  after  his  death),  and  if  any 
of  its  legal  provisions  can  be  satisfactorily  proved 
(which  they  seldom  can  be) ,  they  are  carried  out.  Other- 
wise the  estate  is  divided  as  if  there  had  been  no  will. 

If  after  making  a  will,  a  man  sells  a  piece  of  property 
named  in  it,  the  person  to  whom  he  has  left  it  can  get 
no  equivalent:  the  will  is  to  that  extent  of  no  effect: 
so  people  naming  special  pieces  of  property  in  wills, 
must  be  careful  afterwards.  A  better  way,  unless  there 
is  reason  to  the  contrary,  would  be  to  name  only  sums 
of  money,  or  shares  of  the  estate. 

In  some  states,  marriage  or  the  birth  of  a  child,  after 
making  a  will,  sets  aside  the  will,  it  being  assumed  that 
it  would  be  the  testator's  wish  that  the  new  member 
of  the  family  should  be  provided  for,  which  of  course, 
would  be  done  by  treating  his  estate  as  if  he  were 
intestate. 

Theoretically,  a  man  can  leave  property  to  whom  he 
pleases,  tho  if  he  passes  over  those  who  would  naturally 
be  nearest  and  dearest  to  him  in  favor  of  others,  it 
would  make  it  easier  for  those  neglected  to  prove  him 
of  unsound  mind,  so  that  his  will  would  be  set  aside. 
222  (a).  Who  can-  Under  the  English  law,  and  still  in  some 
not  make  wills.       states,  not  Only  are  wills  of  persons  of  un- 


204  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  222  a 

sound  mind  set  aside,  but  also  those  of  boys  under 
fourteen  and  girls  under  twelve.  In  most  states,  how- 
ever, the  ages  have  been  raised  to  eighteen  and  sixteen. 
Until  lately,  under  the  law  of  England,  and  perhaps 
still  under  that  of  some  of  the  backward  states,  mar- 
ried women  cannot  make  wills. 

222  (b).  ResMc-  There  are  also  some  other  restrictions 
tions  on  alienation,  regarding  what  the  law  will  or  will  not  see 
carried  out  in  a  will.  The  experience  of  ages  has  shown 
that  it  is  against  "the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  num- 
ber" as  the  philosophers  say,  or  against  "public  policy" 
as  the  lawyers  say,  that  land  or  capital  should  be  kept 
in  hands  that  cannot  or  will  not  use  it  properly,  and 
so  made  more  difficult  of  attainment  by  people  of 
ability  who  will  get  the  most  out  of  it,  and  manage  it 
so  as  to  afford  the  most  employment  and  product  for 
their  fellow  men;  and  it  has  also  been  realized  that  it 
is  against  public  policy  that  the  accumulation  by  com- 
pound interest  of  enormous  properties  should  put  so 
much  power  in  any  set  of  hands  as  to  make  them  dan- 
gerous to  the  community.*  For  these  reasons  the  law 
will  not  give  efficacy  to  any  disposition  of  property 
which  will  delay  its  passage  into  new  hands  for  many 
generations.  So  it  is  very  important  in  making  a  will 
leaving  property  in  trust  for  the  benefit  of  children  or 
descendants  more  remote,  not  to  run  up  against  any 
of  the  laws  affecting  alienation.  There  are  several  of 
these,  varying  in  different  states,  and  much  complicated 
by  decisions  under  various  circumstances :  so  it  is  wise 
to  consult  a  lawyer  whenever  trying  to  tie  up  property 
for  anybody's  benefit,  or  for  that  matter  in  making  any 
will  whatever.  And  it  may  well  be  remarked  in  passing 
that  it  is  very  unwise  to  put  off  making  a  will  until 
one's  deathbed  is  reached.  Not  everybody  dies  in  bed; 
and  for  those  who  do,  the  time  is  apt  to  be  deferred, 
rather  than  hastened,  by  the  consciousness  that  one's 

*  This  well-established  principle  of  law  is  now  attracting  the 
attention  of  those  who  consider  it  necessary  to  curb  the  power 
of  the  trusts,  and  to  limit  the  accumulation  of  excessive  fortunes. 


§  222  c]   Law  of  Some  Quasi-Contractual  Relations.      205 

affairs  are  as  well  adjusted  as  one  can  make  them.  In 
England,  it  is  the  drift  of  the  law  to  let  property  be 
tied  up  at  least  during  any  existing  life.  Once  a  trust 
for  the  benefit  of  all  the  testator's  grandchildren  was 
maintained  until  the  death  of  the  last  of  eight  grand- 
children who  were  alive  when  the  ivill  took  effect.  But 
more  grandchildren  born  after  the  will  took  effect,  got 
no  benefit  from  the  trust  after  the  last  of  the  earlier 
grandchildren  died.  Yet  of  course  the  later  ones  par- 
ticipated in  the  division  of  the  estate  that  the  law 
then  required,  but  the  case  would  probably  not  have 
received  the  attention  it  has  unless  other  persons  were 
living  who  had  to  share  with  them  to  their  disadvantage. 
But  there  is  an  American  illustration  in  a  direction 
nearly  opposite.  The  American  law  tends  to  restrict 
alienation  only  during  the  longer  life  of  one  of  two  living 
persons  who  must  be  designated  in  the  will.  Hence 
when  a  testator  tried  to  create  a  trust  for  the  benefit 
of  four  living  granddaughters,  it  was  declared  void 
because  he  had  designated  more  than  two,  during  the 
life  of  the  surviving  one  of  whom  the  trust  should  last. 
222(c).  Devises  for  Notwithstanding  all  this,  property  can 
educational  or  be  tied  up  for  cducational  or  charitable 
uses  as  long  as  one  pleases,  and  the  benefit 
of  such  things  as  hospitals  and  schools  can  be  restricted 
to  particular  kinds  of  people.  Yet  a  testator  could  not 
endow  an  elegant  domain  with  homes  and  schools  whose 
use  should  be  restricted  to  his  descendants  forever, 
because  it  would  be  a  plain  attempt  to  evade  the  law. 
Of  course  the  determination  of  whether  any  such  scheme 
is  an  attempt  to  evade  the  law,  is  one  of  the  things 
that  judges  are  for:  they  are  all  the  time  stopping  at- 
tempts to  evade  the  law.  Such  a  case  could  hardly 
escape  the  attention  of  the  courts,  because  as  soon  as 
the  time  should  come  for  proving  such  a  will,  or  later, 
when  the  legal  time  should  come  for  dividing  up  the 
property,  there  would  probably  be  people  entitled  to 
inherit,  who  would  apply  to  the  courts  for  their  rights. 
It  is  not  likely  that  all  of  a  testator's  family  would  have 
died  out:   there  would  be  a  distant  relative  somewhere. 


2o6  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  222  c 

If  not,  the  property  would  escheat  to  the  state  any- 
how. 

When  all  bequests  have  been  paid,  if  anything  is  left 
over,  it  is  divided  as  the  law  would  have  divided  the 
whole  estate  if  there  had  been  no  will. 

A  minor  child  does  not  at  once  become 
223.  Guardianship,  ^j^^  owner  of  his  share  of  a  parent's  estate. 
He  holds  the  legal  title,  but  the  management  of  it,  in- 
cluding the  signing  of  all  papers  relating  to  it,  is  gen- 
erally done  by  his  guardian — a  person  approved  by  the 
court,  often  the  surviving  parent,  tho  the  guardian  is 
generally  named  in  a  will. 

After  the  testator's  death,  the  will  must  be  proved 
genuine  before  a  court  whose  province  it  is  to  attend 
to  the  interests  of  widows,  orphans  and  other  bene- 
ficiaries from  the  estates  of  such  persons.  If  there  is 
no  will  disposing  of  an  estate,  application  for  admin- 
istrators must  be  made  by  the  parties  in  interest. 

On  first  learning  that  courts  appoint 
bate'Courts°*^  ^^°'  administrators  or  executors,  people  are  very 
apt  to  ask:  Why  should  a  court  com.e 
bothering  in  the  private  affairs  of  a  family  when  it 
loses  its  chief  member  or  any  member?  To  begin  with, 
a  will  is  often  questioned,  and  somebody  must  pass  on 
its  validity.  Then  the  estate  of  a  deceased  person  is 
not  merely  an  affair  of  his  family.  The  richest  man 
owes  some  debts — probably  the  richer  he  is,  the  larger 
they  are.  Moreover,  as  we  have  seen,  a  man  of  great 
ability  is  called  upon  to  help  manage  the  affairs  of  a 
great  many  people — as  guardian,  administrator,  and  in 
the  various  other  forms  of  trusteeship.  His  relations 
to  all  these  people,  not  to  speak  of  those  to  his  family, 
often  give  rise,  after  a  man's  death,  to  a  great  many 
questions,  and  civilization  has  never  been  evolved  very 
far  without  its  being  found  necessary  to  have  special 
officers,  and  even  special  courts,  to  see  that  justice  is 
done  in  all  these  connections.  Nor  is  the  multitude 
and  complexity  of  these  relations  the  only  reason  why 
courts  should  supervise  the  management  of  the  estates 
of    deceased    persons.     Those    for    whose    benefit    the 


§  226]    Law  of  Some  Quasi-Contractual  Relations.        207 

estates  are  settled — especially  children  when  they 
grow  up,  might  not  be  satisfied,  and  might  make  claims 
on  a  guardian,  or  on  the  executor  of  a  will,  or  the  ad- 
ministrator of  an  estate  where  there  is  no  will.  If  such 
trustees  act  under  the  advice  and  supervision  of  a  court, 
their  acts  cannot  be  successfully  questioned. 

225.  Trustees  for  Minor  heirs  are,  of  course,  not  the  only 
defectives.  persons  whose  property  is  cared  for  by 
somebody  else.  Generally  a  court  appoints  somebody 
to  care  for  the  property  of  lunatics,  drunkards  and 
spendthrifts  who  have  families  dependent  on  them. 

ooa  r   ^    „  And  there  are  still  reasons  of  an  00- 

226.  Court  super-  n        i         i  i 

vision  of  Trustees  posite  nature  why  trustees  generally  should 
in  genera.  -^^  watched  over  by  the  courts.      Persons 

having  the  interests  of  others  in  charge  are  not  neces- 
sarily all  superior  to  ignorance  and  temptation.  The 
courts  supply  them  with  the  experience  of  ages,  and 
tend  to  guard  them  against  wrong-doing  of  all  kinds. 

The  judges  tell  them  under  what  circumstances  they 
may  sell  or  mortgage  real  estate  (unless  unlimited  power 
has  been  conferred  in  a  will)  and  what  sorts  of  invest- 
ments they  may  make;  and  also  require  accounts  of 
their  proceedings. 

Yet  all  these  methods  are  not  any  more  efficacious 
than  other  human  inventions  are :  hence  the  desirability, 
as  before  stated,  of  a  will  naming  executors  who  can 
be  trusted,  or  associating  a  trust  company  in  the  man- 
agement of  the  property. 

When  the  task  of  any  of  the  trustees  we  have  been 
describing  is  done,  they  can  be  made  safe  from  future 
trouble  by  taking  their  accounts  before  the  proper 
court.  After  the  court  has  approved  them,  the  trustees 
are  free  from  all  liability,  unless  later  there  is  evidence 
of  fraud. 


CHAPTER   XVIIL 

PERSONAL     PROPERTY. 

Schemes  for  Distributing  it  more  Evenly. 

(I)  Scamping,  Forbidding  Work,  Destroying  Product, 
Anarchism,,  Communism. 

Now  we  have  some  idea  of  the  agencies  by  which 
property  is  evolved  and  distributed  and  protected,  and 
we  knew  before  we  studied  these  agencies,  that  the  dis- 
tribution is  very  unequal — that  the  mass  of  mankind  get 
very  Httle  compared  with  a  few  favored  ones,  and  are 
naturally  much  dissatisfied  with  what  they  get.  But 
we  have  studied  to  very  little  purpose  if  we  have  not 
come  to  a  realization  that  the  inequahty  is  more  of 
Nature's  making  than  of  man's,  and  that  roughly  speak- 
ing, and  with  a  wide  but  decreasing  margin  of  excep- 
tion, the  men  loudest  in  objections  generally  get  what 
they  loudest  claim— namely,  get  what  each  man  pro- 
duces— that,  still  roughly  speaking  and  with  a  wide 
margin  for  exceptions,  those  who  get  little,  produce 
little;  those  who  get  much  produce  much;  and  that 
he  who  would  get  more,  must  produce  more. 

But  we  also  know  that  this  is  a  slow  and,  to  most 
men,  virtually  an  impossible  way;  and  that  conse- 
quently the  world  is  full  of  schemes  for  doing  it  in 
other  ways.  Some  of  these  we  will  now  examine. 
227.  Poverty  has  First,  however,  let  us  realize  that  altho 
no  causes.  a  great  deal  of  speculation  has  been  spent 

on  the  causes  of  poverty,  there  is  no  cause  of  poverty. 
Wealth  only  has  causes;  but  ignorance,  stupidity,  lazi- 
ness and  misfortune  of  course  obstruct  the   causes  of 

20S 


§  2  28]  Personal  Property.  209 

wealth.  In  early  times  all  people  were  poor,  even  to- 
day every  child  is  born  with  nothing,  and  of  course  he 
has  nothing  until  he  produces  it  himself,  except  as  it  is 
given  him  from  the  production  of  others.  Unless  he 
produces  much,  or  somebody  produces  much  for  him, 
he  never  has  much.  Poverty  lasts  until  the  causes  of 
wealth  are  effectively  put  in  action. 

We  have  seen  the  conditions  under  which  civilized 
man  evolves  his  rights  in  personal  property,  to  be 
initiative  energy,  discretion,  frugality  and  the  other 
virtues  which  we  sum  up  as  Ability. 

Of  course  there  are  other  ways  to  wealth,  such  as 
luck  and  inheritance.  But  supposing  them  frequent 
enough  for  poor  men  generally  to  build  any  hopes  on 
(which  they  are  not),  there  is  a  characteristic  of  wealth 
got  in  those  ways,  which  detracts  very  much  from  its 
usefulness.  It  is  generally  very  fleeting:  "Easy  come, 
easy  go",  and  "Twenty-five  years  from  shirt-sleeves  to 
shirt-sleeves",*  are  proverbs  that  have  grown  up  from 
general  experience. 

And  yet  the  lazy  and  stupid,  and  even  the  perversely 
ingenious,  are  constantly  nursing  schemes  for  making 
everybody  rich  in  defiance  of  the  ways  Nature  has 
decreed,  just  as  ignorant  people  are  constantly  trying 
to  invent  perpetual-motion  machines,  and  to  make 
water  run  up-hill  by  its  own  weight.  We  have  already 
touched  some  of  these  schemes  as  affecting  rights  in 
real  estate,  but  similar  questions  come  up  in  connection 
with  the  products  of  labor,  and  we  shall  see  in  time 
that  they  come  up  in  regard  to  money  and  taxation. 
Let  us  now  examine  the  most  prominent  of  the  schemes 
for  diffusing  property  without  diffusing  Ability  to  pro- 
duce  it. 

The  one  probably  in  most  general  use  is 

228.  Scamping       "making  more  work".      Workmen   often 

think  that,  they  can  make  more  work  by 

*  Mr.  Walker,  of  Worcester,  whose  investigation  has  already- 
been  alluded  to  (ioi,note),  found  that  of  the  sons  of  the  one 
hundred  and  seven  manufacturers  in  his  city  in  i860,  only  seven 
had  property,  or  had  died  leaving  property,  up  to  '89. 


2IO  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§228 

scamping  their  work  or  neglecting  it — that  if  a  job  is  done 
so  poorly  as  to  need  doing  two  or  three  times,  there 
will  be  just  so  much  more  demand  for  labor;  or  that  if  a 
man  does  only  half  as  much  work  in  a  day  as  he  reason- 
ably might,  two  men  will  get  a  day's  work  out  of  a  day* 

*  From  the  New  York  Times,  April  24,  1 900 : 
"The  Crime  of  Mrs.  Derrick. — A  headstrong  and  unman- 
ageable woman  perpetrated  a  crime  against  the  new  social 
order  in  a  Lowell  carpet-mill  the  other  day,  by  doing  more  work, 
and  earning  more  money  than  the  laws  of  the  Carpet-Weavers' 
Union  allow.  The  details  of  the  shocking  afEair  are  set  forth  in 
a  despatch  to  our  neighbor  the  Sun: 

"  'Lowell,  Mass.,  April  21. — Three  hundred  weavers  employed 
by  the  Lowell  Manufacturing  Company,  one  of  the  concerns  in 
the  Bigelow  Carpet  Company,  are  on  a  strike  because  one  of 
their  number,  Mrs.  Jessie  Derrick,  persists  in  turning  more 
work  off  her  loom  than  is  permitted  by  the  regulations  of  the 
Carpet- Weavers'  Union.  The  union  has  decided  upon  a  maxi- 
mum product  of  two  and  one-half  pieces,  but  Mrs.  Derrick  has 
her  loom  speeded  up  so  high  that  she  can  turn  off  three  pieces 
a  day.  On  account  of  this  the  union  sent  word  to  the  agent 
of  the  company  and  asked  that  he  compel  her  to  reduce  her 
production,  but  he  refuses  to  stop  the  woman  from  earning 
all  the  money  she  is  able  to.  .  .  .' 

"  Mrs.  Derrick  explains  that  her  loom  was  not  'speeded  up'. 
Not  at  all.  It  was  her  energy  and  quickness  and  willingness  to 
work  that  wrought  the  mischief.  Back  of  it  all  very  likely  lay 
the  necessity  of  earning  more  money  to  support  those  depending 
on  her  for  food.  .  .  . 

"  Other  carpet -weavers  in  the  Bigelow  works  are  as  capable  of 
getting  off  as  much  work  as  she,  but  as  the  union  has  decided 
it  is  unwise  for  them  to  do  so,  they  all  comply  with  the  rule 
limiting  the  maximum  product  of  each  operative  to  two  and  a 
half  pieces. 

"The  dead  level  of  triumphant  inferiority  cannot  be  main- 
tained and  the  comfort  of  the  incapable  and  the  lazy  safeguarded 
unless  the  two-and-one-half-piece  rule  is  enforced." 

From  the  Chicago  correspondence  of  the  New  York  Evening 
Post,  Nov.  'gg: 

"  A  short  time  ago  a  Chicago  man,  in  moving  a  dresser,  broke 
off  a  gas-jet  which  projected  from  the  wall  in  his  bedroom.  He 
plugged  the  broken  pipe  and  took  the  fragment  to  a  gas-fitting 
supply  house,  intending  to  buy  the  short  piece  of  pipe  and  attach 
it  hirnself.     When  he  asked  for  it  the  salesman  said: 

"  'Are  you  a  journeyman  gas-fitter?' 

"  '  No',  said  the  customer,  'I'm  a  shoe-dealer.  What's  that 
got  to  do  with  buying  gas-pipe  ? ' 


§  2  28]  Personal  Property.  211 

That  certainly  would  promote  the  general  good,  if 
the  world  can  be  made  richer  by  producing  less  wealth. 

But  its  effect  even  on  the  laborers  themselves  is 
disastrous. 

First;  the  scampers  keep  themselves  out  of  jobs; 
Second:  when  they  get  jobs,  if  all  scamp,  tho  each 
scamper  gets  paid  for  his  false  work,  he  has  to  pay  for 
the  false  work  of  other  scampers;    Third:    in  the  long 

"  'A  whole  lot', said  the  salesman;  'I  can't  sell  you  that  sec- 
tion of  pipe  unless  you  have  a  working  card  from  the  gas-fitters' 
union.' 

"  'But  I  want  this  pipe  for  m}^  own  house,  and  I'm  going  to 
put  it  up  myself ' ,  protested  the  householder. 

"  'That's  the  very  trouble  ',  said  the  clerk.  'You'll  have  to  go 
and  hire  a  journeyman  gas-fitter  to  put  that  pipe  on,  I  can't 
sell  it  to  you.' 

"  And  the  householder  was  forced  to  hire  a  gas-fitter,  at  $3.75 
a  day,  to  come  and  do  the  work. 

"  There  was  a  quantity  of  old  iron  piping  in  the  basement  of  a 
building,  which  the  contractor  sold  to  a  second-hand  dealer.  The 
man  drove  his  wagon  down  to  the  place  and  started  to  load  it 
himself  with  the  old  pipe.  He  was  stopped  by  a  member  of 
the  Steam-fitters'  Union,  who  told  him  he  must  employ  mem- 
bers of  the  union  to  handle  that  pipe  or  they  would  call  out  all 
the  union  men  of  the  building.  He  had  paid  for  the  stuff,  and  so 
he  had  to  hire  two  men  at  $4.50  a  day  to  load  his  wagons  with 
the  pipe.  .  .  . 

"The  Plumbers'  Union  has  laid  down  the  precise  amount  of 
effort  which  may  be  expended  and  branded  'one  day'.  There 
is  a  walking  delegate  in  each  ward  whose  duty  it  is  to  visit 
each  job  and  check  up  the  work,  and  any  plumber  found  working 
longer  than  the  rules  allow  is  liable  to  a  fine. 

"  In  one  case  the  stonework  on  a  building  was  all  completed 
except  the  keystone  of  the  arch  over  the  main  doorway.  An 
opening  had  been  left  for  it,  and  the  workmen  were  arranging  a 
block  and  tackle  to  hoist  it  into  place,  when  a  walking  delegate 
appeared  and  demanded  whether  the  men  engaged  in  the 
work  were  members  of  the  Hoisting  Engineers'  Union.  He  was 
told  that  they  were  not — they  were  members  of  the  Bricklayers' 
Union  and  the  Stonemasons'  Union  and  several  other  unions, 
btit  the  hoisting  engineers  had  been  overlooked.  At  once  he 
ordered  the  work  on  the  btiilding  stopped  until  a  hoisting  engineer 
appeared  to  haul  that  forty-pound  piece  of  stone  up  to  its  place, 
and  all  the  work  came  to  a  standstill  until  the  proper  man  was 
found. 

"  A  lather  of  ordinary  speed  can  put  up  sixty  bundles  of  laths 


212  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§228 

run,  the  scamper  lessens  the  general  demand  for  labor, 
and  of  course  his  own  wages. 

22^  (a).  Keeps  the  ^^  iHustration :  a  man  in  New  York 
scamper  out  of  wanted  to  put  a  trunk-lift  from  his  cellar 
^°  *■  to    his   garret.     Some   steam-heating   fix- 

tures in  the  cellar  were  in  the  way.  At  that  time,  the 
steam-fitters  had  a  very  strong  union,  and  it  was  said 
to  be  the  policy  to  "make  work"  to  a  very  extraordinary 
extent.  Consequently  steam-fitting  in  New  York  cost 
several  times  what  it  did  in  most  other  places,  and  the 
estimate  for  the  alteration  in  question  was  so  high 
that  the  owner  concluded  not  to  put  in  the  lift:  moral, 
"making  work"  cost  the  steam-fitters  a  job,  and  cost 
the  lift-makers  a  job  too. 

Another  illustration:  in  the  nineties,  no  first-class 
mason  in  New  York  would  do  a  job  of  plastering  in 
less  than  three  coats,  while  excellent  jobs  were  done 
elsewhere  in  two.     At  length  came  a  quarrel  between 

in  a  day.  The  rules  of  the  union  limit  him  to  twenty-five. 
That  makes  the  job  last  longer,  and  as  the  lather  is  paid  by  the 
day  it  keeps  him  at  work  more  than  twice  as  long.  The  plaster- 
ers who  come  after  him  can  work  no  faster  than  the  laths  are 
put  up,  therefore  his  job  is  extended  to  twice  its  length  by  this 
simple  rule. 

"  And  now  conditions  have  reached  such  a  stage  that  the 
opposing  forces  are  face  to  face  and  measuring  each  other's 
strength.  The  contractors  and  builders  have  warned  the  unions 
that  January  i  will  see  a  general  shut-down  unless  rules,  hours, 
and  other  conditions  change.  If  that  'lockout'  comes,  no 
man  can  say  where  it  will  end." 

When  it  does  "  end",  it  will  be  interesting  to  figure  the  profits 
the  laborers  have  directly  made  throtlgh  this  form  of  scamping, 
not  to  include  what  they  themselves  will  have  paid  out  for 
scamped  gas-fitting,  steam-fitting,  plumbing,  hoisting  and 
lathing. 

After  the  foregoing  was  in  type,  the  results  appeared.  From 
the  New  York  Evening  Post's  Chicago  correspondence,  Dec.  16, 
1900: 

"The  Building  Trades  Council  ...  is  rapidly  nearing  its  end. 
...  It  had  more  than  30,000  members.  .  .  .  Now  it  has  about 
10,000,  and  [pending  withdrawals]  will  reduce  it  to  7000.  .  .  . 
The  loss  to  the  men  in  wages  by  permitting  the  unprincipled 
leaders  ...  to  prevent  them  working  has  been  in  the  vicinity  of 
$2,500,000." 


§  2  2  8  c]  Personal  Property.  213 

masters  and  men,  and  at  least  one  of  the  masters  told 
why  he  had  declined  to  do  two-coat  work:  the  trade- 
union  would  not  let  its  men  worjc  on  jobs  of  less  than 
three — one-third  of  most  plastering  jobs  was  pure  waste, 
including  those  on  the  buildings  for  which  the  plasterers 
themselves  were  paying  rent ;  and  moreover  many  jobs 
must  have  been  lost  in  all  the  building  trades,  as  was 
just  shown  in  the  steam-fitting  and  dumb-waiter  trades. 
000  /A,  u      *  But  when  the  scamper  has  to  pay  other 

2^0  \0).  He  gets  .  ^ 

only  one  profit  but  scampers,  Other  scampers  have  to  pay 
pays  many.  -j^-^ .    ^^  ^^  ^^^^  appear  as   broad  as  it  is 

long.  But  he  gets  paid  for  his  own  work  at  first  hand, 
wdiile  most  work  that  he  has  to  pay  for,  must  pass 
through  many  hands  before  it  reaches  him,  and  he 
must  pay  toll  to  them  all,  and  this  toll  is  based  on  the 
scamped  cost.  Manufactured  articles  cost  the  consumer 
many  times  what  the  manufacturer  gets  for  them. 
Hence,  if  the  hands  through  which  the  article  passes, 
scamp  their  work,  the  consumer  has  to  pay  not  only 
for  the  scamped  work  of  the  first  producer  (as  he  gets 
paid  for  his  own) ,  but  also  for  the  toll  of  every  set  of 
hands  through  which  it  passes  before  reaching  him. 

Scamping  lessens  not  only  the  demand  for  particular 
jobs,  but  also  for  labor  in  general.  Work  only  half 
done,  or  done  at  half  speed,  costs  twice  as  much  as 
228  (c).  Cannot  ^^  properly  done — in  fact  more  than  twice 
long  receiue  good  as  much,  bccausc  not  Only  is  half  the  labor 
earned!"  ^^  wastcd,  but  generally  some  of  the  mate- 

Piecework.  ^^^      Therefore,  not  only  is  the  public  un- 

able to  pay  for  as  much  of  it,  but  it  cannot,  in  the  long 
run,  enable  an  employer  to  pay  high  wages.  And  if 
laborers  return  less  than  a  paying  product  for  their 
wages,  the  capital  employing  them  must  in  time  be 
used  up,  the  employer's  business  diminished  or  destroyed, 
and  the  demand  for  labor  be  just  that  much  less. 

In  order  to  make  paying  by  the  piece  a  good  remedy 
against  men  spreading  their  work  over  too  long  a  time, 
one  would  have  to  invent  a  remedy  against  scamping 
the  pieces  in  order  to  get  more  pay  in  a  given  time. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  highest  order  of  work  is  done 


2  14  ^^^^  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  228  c 

"by  time",  and  the  lowest  order  "by  the  piece".  A 
house  done  by  "days'  work"  will  generally  bring  more 
than  one  done  by  contract;  and  the  better  orders' of 
mechanics,   the  world   over,   work  by  the   day. 

Putting  the  thing  in  the  broadest  way,  if  all  men 
only  pretended  to  work,  the  result  would  of  course  be 
that  nothing  would  be'  produced,  and  no  man  would 
have  anything. 

229,  Pretending  The  philosophers  who  believe  in  ' '  making 

and  forbidding  labor. -^ork  "  by  scamping  it,  have  not  stopped 
at  scamping.  Thornton  *  gives  a  case  where  they  tried 
mere  pretending.  A  lot  of  stone-cutting  had  been  done 
contrary  to  trade-union  rules,  and  the  union  made  the 
bosses  pay  men  for  standing  idle  over  it  with  their  tools, 
as  long  as  it  had  taken  to  cut  it.  Thornton  wrote  forty 
3^ears  ago.  In  our  progressive  age,  the  papers  are  full 
of  similar  instances. 

The  schemes  to  rob  somebody — even  other  laborers, 
for  the  benefit  of  labor,  include  the  seizing  of  work  that 
naturally  belongs  to  somebody  else,  and  making  the 
community  pay  the  waste  of  the  unnatural  arrange- 
ment. Of  this  class  are  laws  requiring  stone-cutting 
to  be  done  in  cities  where  the  stone  is  used,  and  at 
city  prices,  instead  of  at  the  quarries  at  country  prices. 
Such  a  law  regarding  some  public  buildings  in  New 
York  City,  was  pronounced  unconstitutional  in  1901, 
at  an  important  saving  to  the  city. 

The  Supreme  Court  of  Indiana,  in  a  decision  that  a  law 
was  unconstitutional  which  obliged  counties,  cities  and 
towns  to  pay  at  least  20  cents  an  hour  for  unskilled 
labor,  held  that  cities,  counties  and  towns  have  as  much 
right  as  anybody  else  to  contract  for  labor  at  the 
lowest  market  price.  The  proponents  of  the  law  hoped 
to  establish  a  rate  for  labor  generally :  as  if  the  matter 
could  be  lifted  away  from  the  law  of  demand  and 
supply,  otherwise  than  by  disguised  "charity". 

Even  more  absurd  than  the  foregoing  proceedings,  is 
the  securing  of  business  to  the  nation  at  the  expense 
of  the  nation.     Such  a  proceeding  was  the  regulation 
*  On  Labor. 


§  2  2g]  Personal  Property.  215 

that  all  material  to  be  used  in  making  the  Panama 
Canal,  should  be  bought  in  the  United  States,  and 
when  possible  be  transported  over  railroads  in  the 
United  States — both  steps  regardless  of  whether  the 
goods  or  the  transportation  would  cost  the  people  of 
the  United  States  more  in  the  United  States  than  else- 
where. The  first  of  these  absurd  provisions  was  revoked, 
and  restored  in  answer  to  the  clamor  of  the  protection- 
ists. At  the  time  of  this  writing  the  second  has  been 
revoked,  and  there  has  not  yet  been  time  to  restore  it. 

Protective  tariffs,  we  shall  see  later,  tend  to  become 
of  the  same  class. 

Of  course,  in  the  long  run,  such  wastes  must  be  dis- 
tributed over  the  community,  and  if  they  were  the  rule, 
the  wasting  laborers  would  have  had  to  pay  back  for 
them,  all  that  they  got  for  their  own  waste.  No  rule  is 
good  for  anybody  unless  it  is  good  for  everybody.  But 
that  school  of  philosophers  has  not  even  stopped  at 
scamping  and  pretending  work:  they  go  so  far  as  to 
forbid  it  part  of  the  time,  as  in  the  celebrated  case  of 
Mrs.  Derrick  (228,  note). 

This  matter  is  important  enough  to  justify  adding 
one  more  extreme  illustration.  Early  in  1906  the 
following  resolution  was  introduced  at  the  United 
Mine  Workers'  convention  in  Indianapolis,  and  referred 
to  a  committee: 

RESOLUTION  No.  107. 

Whereas,  The  practice  of  many  of  our  members,  working 
tinder  favorable  conditions  in  various  parts  of  this  country,  of 
making  six  and  seven  dollars  per  shift  is  detrimental  to  the 
best  interests  of  our  organization  as  a  whole;    and, 

Whereas,  This  has  a  tendency  to  make  it  harder  for  us  to 
obtain  an  advance  in  wages  at  our  convention;    and. 

Whereas,  The  average  miner  is  unable  to  make  $3.50  per 
shift;   therefore,  be  it 

Resolved,  That  this  convention  place  a  restriction  of  $3.50 
per  shift,  clear  of  all  mine  expenses,  on  all  miners  working  at 
the  face. 

Presented  by  Local  Union  Nq.  99,  Belleville,  111. 

A.  L.  Wright, 

T.  J.   HiTCHINGS, 

Scale  Committee.  Delegates. 


2i6  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§229 

The  Times,  in  commenting  on  this  resolution,  quotes 
Archbishop  Keane: 

' '  The  man  who  slights  his  work  and  gives  his  employer  less 
than  he  agrees  to  give  is  a  thief,  and  any  labor  union  that 
upholds  him  in  this  slighting  of  work  is  a  school  of  thievery." 

The  wilHngness  of  a  trade-union  committee  to  receive 
and  refer  such  a  resolution  as  that,  demonstrates  the 
body  to  be  under  the  dominion  of  a  degree  of  short- 
sightedness that  it  must  take  generations  to  cure;  to 
be  far  below  the  control  of  reason;  and  in  exigencies,  to 
be  susceptible  to  no  other  control  than  the  unflinching 
power  of  the  state.  To  temporize  by  anything  short 
of  that,  is  simply  cruel. 

If  reports  are  to  be  believed,  the  Australasian  cases 
of  the  early  nineties,  surpass  even  these.  There  labor 
was  scarce  and  food  cheap,  and  a  man  could  make 
enough  to  live  on  by  working  half  the  day.  The  in- 
capables  would  not  let  the  capables  do  more  than 
half  a  day's  work.  One  must  either  soldier  all  day  or 
go  home  when  he  had  done  as  much  as  a  slouch  usually 
does  in  a  day.  Capable  men  began  leaving  the  colony 
on  account  of  it.  But  the  demonstration  of  the 
absurdity  was  shown  when  the  policy  had  stopped 
some  industries  and  depopulated  some  villages,  and 
some  of  the  leaders  and  "walking  delegates"  were  in 
jail  for  conspiracy. 

But  since  these  conditions  were  stated,  they  must 
have  cured  themselves:  for  nothing  is  said  regarding 
them  by  the  most  recent  writers.  In  fact,  there  is 
some  reason  to  believe  that  the  testimony  on  which 
they  were  based  (tho  it  appeared  in  a  high  quarter — 
the  correspondence  of  The  Nation,  unless  I  am  mis- 
taken— or  I  should  not  have  accepted  it)  is  exaggerated, 
and  that  the  conditions  were  partly  due  to  industrial 
depression  and  financial  stringency.  Dr.  Clark  *  goes 
so  far  as  to  say  that  while  such  statements  may  apply 
to   particular  localities   an-d    occasions    in    Australasia, 

*  The  Labor  Movement  in  Australasia,  by  Victor  S.  Clark,  1906. 


§  231]  Personal  Property.  217 

"Ca'  canny"  and  restriction  of  output  are  not  remark- 
ably greater  in  Australasia  than  in  Great  Britain  and 
some  parts  of  America.  Yet  I  let  the  original  state- 
ments stand,  with  these  qualifications,  as  an  illustra- 
tion to  the  inexperienced  reader  of  the  difficulty  of 
getting  correct  information  on  subjects  where  there 
is  so  much  controversy.  We  shall  see  plenty  more  of 
such  illustrations. 
ooA  II cu  tf  After  all,  it  may  be    asked:    where  is 

230.  'Shutting  .         ,.-.  '       ,      ,     -^  ,    ,  ^    .    ^. 

down"  a  different  the  difference  between  laborers  restrictmg 
^^^^'  work,  and  manufacturers  restricting  pro- 

duct? The  manufacturer  generally  restricts  volun- 
tarily, while  the  laborer  is  often  forced  to  it — a  direct 
interference  with  the  Right  to  Work;  if  several  manu- 
facturers shut  down,  they  all  share  the  loss:  if  the  in- 
competent limit  the  labors  of  the  competent,  the  first 
gain  at  the  others'  loss.  For  the  manufacturer,  the 
public  decides  the  question  by  refusing  the  goods;  for 
the  laborer,  the  question  is  decided  irrespective  of  the 
public  needs — the  public  may  be  suffering  for  the  labor, 
but  must  go  unsatisfied  in  order  to  enable  the  incom- 
petent to  get  higher  wages.  The  manufacturer's  slow- 
ing up  (in  legitimate  cases)  is  to  prevent  waste :  restrict- 
ing labor  regardless  of  cases,  in   most  cases  is  waste. 

Even  scamping,  pretending,  and  choking-off  labor 
have  not  been  enough  for  the  philosophers:  they  have 
often  gone  to  destroying.     The  papers    are  full  of  in- 

„,,  r,   .     ,,         stances.     As   three    in    many,    the    stone- 

231.  Destruction  ,.   ,         ,         .  ,         n    .1  1 

as  an  aid  to  polishers    union  made  all  the  workmen  m 

Production.  ^^le  Hotel  Savoy  in  New  York  stop  work 

until  the  polish  was  rubbed  off  some  marble  mantels 
that  had  been  polished  near  the  quarries  instead  of 
by  the  New  York  union.  In  1906  and  for  some  years 
earlier,  in  most  American  printing  offices,  the  men 
who  set  advertisements,  would  not  use  electrotype 
plates  sent  by  advertisers,  before  they  had  set  up  a 
copy  and  destroyed  their  work.  At  a  meeting  of 
glass-blowers'  unions  in  Terre  Haute  in  1905,  their 
national  officers  were  instructed  to  "get  out  a  circular 
to  be  sent  to  all  labor  bodies  asking  them  to  get  their 


2i8  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§231 

families  and  their  friends  to  break  all  bottles  before 
throwing  them  away."  Those  bottles  were  the  prop- 
erty of  the  brewers,  bore  their  owners'  names  blown  in 
the  glass,  were  subject  to  reclamation  wherever  found, 
and  their  contents  had  been  sold  on  the  understanding 
that  the  bottles  should  be  returned.  The  resolution  of 
the  glass-blowers  was-  a  deliberate  invitation  to  destroy 
other  people's  property  in  order  to  make  work  for  the 
glass-blowers. 

People  often  falsely  reason  about  a  good  many  other 
things  as  they  do  about  scamped  work.     In  advocating 

not  only  scamped  work,  but  some  kinds 
2f  ma?y's^chemes'to  of  taxes  (464)  and  cheap  money  (362) 
get  something  out    and  all  other  schemes  for  enabling  a  man 

to  get  something  for  nothing,  people  forget 
that  schemes  to  get  something  for  nothing  are  also 
schemes  to  make  somebody  (and  themselves  as  often 
as  anybody)  pay  something  for  nothing.  This  is  in- 
evitably the  case  of  all  wages  artificially  made  higher 
than  the  natural  equation  between  supply  and  demand 
(148  d). 

„_    o     1  That  fact  is  so  often  lost  sight  of  because 

233.  People  gener-  ,  .,        .1  •    1      ii     ^    1  •    1 

ailv  consider  only  people  generally  thmk  that  high  wages 
income,  not  outgo.    ^^^^^   ^|^g   ^^^^^   question   of  prosperity. 

Men  of  average  mind  seem  able  to  think  of  themselves 
only  as  producers,  not  as  consumers.  They  do  not 
seem  able  to  reflect  that  they  have  to  pay  out  money 
as  well  as  to  get  it  in,  and  that  if  other  people's  wages 
are  higher  than  the  value  of  the  things  produced,  they 
themselves  have  to  pay  out  something  for  nothing  when 
they  pay  those  wages,  and  have  also  to  pay  middle- 
men's profits  besides,  while  they  themselves  only  receive 
something  for  nothing,  without  any  middlemen's  profits. 
In  point  of  honesty,  scamped  work  is  exactly  on  a 
level  with  false  weight  or  scant  measure  or  an  irre- 
deemable light  dollar.  It  is  a  scheme  to  make  a  man 
pay   for   a   day's   work  without   furnishing  it   to   him. 

Now  let  us  look  into  some  of  the  other  schemes  than 
scamping  work,  which  have  been  regarded  as  superior  to 


§234]  Personal  Property.  219 

Nature's  scheme  for  enabling  men  to  get  rich.  At  the 
bottom  of  them  all,  more  or  less  disguised,  is  (as  we  saw 
regarding  real  estate  [65-74  d\)  the  idea  of  govern- 
ment withdrawing  its  protection  from  property  rights, 
so  as  to  give  those  who  have  been  too  stupid  or  lazy 
or  shiftless  to  accumulate  any  property  of  their  own,  a 
chance  at  that  of  other  people. 

.      . ,  The   most   extreme   proposition   of  this 

kind  is  to  do  away  with  government  itself, 
so  that  a  man  who  has  no  property  of  his  own  can 
help  himself  to  the  property  of  other  people. 

How  long  property  would  be  produced  under  such 
conditions,  the  advocates  of  them  do  not  say.  There 
are  some  who  want  to  do  away  with  government,  who 
still  want  property  rights  respected,  but  they  do  not 
tell  us  how  they  are  going  to  get  them  respected :  they 
want  everybody  to  respect  them  voluntarily,  and  to  be 
models  of  virtue  all  around — voluntarily.  They  say  that 
it  is  a  disgrace  to  a  man  to  have  to  be  compelled;  and 
so^it  is,  but  all  the  same,  a  good  many  will  not  behave 
themselves  unless  threatened  with  that  disgrace. 

The  form  of  insanity  that  wants  these  self -contradic- 
tory things — often  a  murderous  insanity,  often  only  the 
gentle  mooning  of  certain  poets,  novelists  and  aesthetes 
who  make  themselves  ridiculous  in  attempting  the 
sterner  sort  of  intellectual  work — is  attributable  to 
the  same  source  as  most  other  forms  of  insanity — the 
abuse  of  a  good  thing.  Government  is  a  good  thing, 
but  it  is  often  overdone.  Those  who  have  been  unjustly 
oppressed  by  it  often  become  incapable  of  seeing  any- 
thing but  evil  in  it,  or  in  authority  of  any  kind. 

It  need  hardly  be  added  that  those  who  are  afflicted 
in  this  way  are  called  anarchists. 

As  they  seem  to  be  getting  more  troublesome,  there 
is  growing  interest  in  ways  of  suppressing  them.  Rea- 
soning of  course  can  produce  no  effect.  Violent  repres- 
sion seems  to  succeed  no  better,  but  a  perfectly  logical 
way  has  been  suggested  which  may  be  worth  trying: 
if  a  man  wants  to  get  rid  of  government,  rid  him  of  it, 
withdraw  government  protection  from  his  person  and 


2  20  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§234 

property,  if  he  has  any  (which  is  not  Hkely),  and  give 
him  a  chance  to  work  his  theories  out  in  practice.* 
Tho  government  would  not  protect  him,  it  could  con- 
sistently restrain  him,  because  in  withdrawing  its  de- 
fence from  him,  it  would  not  give  up  anybody's  right 
of  self-defence;  and  should  the  anarchist  attack  per- 
son or  property,  the  victim  would  have  a  right  to  all 
the  defence  he  could  muster,  including  that  for  which 
he,  unlike  the  aggressor,  would  not  have  abandoned  his 
right  to  appeal  to  government.  There  is  not  enough 
argument  for  Anarchy,  to  admit  of  its  finding  a  place 
in  a  sane  mind,  so  we  need  not  discuss  it  any  farther. 

Another  class  of  dreamers  are  willing  to  retain  govern- 
ment, but  want  to  do  away  with  property  rights. 
This  class  includes  communists  and  socialists. 

Anarchists,  communists  and  socialists  claim  that 
poverty  is  due  to  existing  social  arrangements  rather 
than  to  the  incapacity  of  many  people,  and  the  claim 
is  true  so  far  as  bad  social  arrangements  impede  the 
operation  of  the  causes  of  wealth.  To  upset  the  social 
arrangements  as  they  propose,  would  be  very  well  if 
234  ra;.  fiarfnesso/ trial  had  ever  proved  any  other  arrange- 
preserii  laws  does  mcuts  better.     But  nothing  is  more  difh- 

not  proue  goodness  ■,,,■,  .iH-  i  i  •! 

of  proposed  cult  than  to  tell  m  advance  now  a  social 

changes.  arrangement  is  going  to  work.     Those  we 

have  are  the  best  we  have  tried,  and  it  has  taken  a 
good  many  thousand  years  to  get  them  even  as  good 
as  they  are  now.  They  have  improved  so  slowly,  be- 
cause human  nature  improves  slowly,  and  all  social 
machinery  has  to  be  worked  by  human  nature. 
„^,  „         ,  The  communists  propose  to  substitute 

235.  Communism,      r         ,  i  .  j  r  _4.  •    i  j. 

for  the  present  order  01  property  rights, 
having  government  make  an  even  division  all  around, 

*  The  author,  while  believing  this  remedy  original  with  him- 
self, of  course  supposed,  it  probably  original  with  a  good  many 
others.  He  first  proposed  it  in  The  Forum  soon  after  the 
Carnot  assassination,  and  on  repeating  it  in  The  Review  of 
Reviews  soon  after  the  McKinley  assassination,  he  received  a 
copy  of  a  similar  proposal  that  had  been  made  by  Judge  Am- 
quist  of  Wisconsin. 


§235^]  Personal  Property.  221 

so  that  those  who  have  saved  nothing  can  have  a  share 
of  what  other  people  have  saved. 

235  (a).  $1,200  At  a  superficial  glance,  it  seems  as  if 
'^p'^"^-  such  a  scheme,   if  it   could  succeed  now, 

would  add  vastly  to  human  happiness.  But  it  could 
not  unless  it  produced  more  things :  for  we  would  have 
only  a  little  more  than  twelve  hundred  dollars  apiece: 
that  being  the  average  wealth  in  the  United  States  in 
1900.  To  divide  it  evenly  would  not  increase  the  hap- 
piness of  those  who  have  less,  as  much  as  it  would 
diminish  the  happiness  of  those  who  have  more. 
235  w.  Sudden  ^^^  e^en  if  a  division  were  to  give 
wealth  a  doubtful  suddcu  Wealth,  suddcn  wealth  is  not  apt 
essing.  ^^  ^^  uscd  Well.     It  Certainly  was  not  at 

the  British  coal-mines  when  a  sudden  rise  in  the  price 
of  coal  gave  the  colliers  a  sudden  rise  in  wages,  and 
many  of  them  spent  the  money  in  feeding  their  dogs 
on  tenderloin  steak,  and  smoking  pipes  with  two  bowls 
and  one  mouthpiece. 

True,  the  rich  do  not  always  use  their  money  well, 
any  more  than  the  poor  suddenly  getting  it,  always 
use  it  badly.  It  is  only  a  matter  of  probabilities  either 
way:  there  is  no  universal  rule  with  so  complex  a 
machine  as  human  nature.  It  is  simply  the  general 
fact  that  a  man  who  gradually  makes  his  money,  is 
almost  certain  to  use  it  better  than  a  man  who  gets 
it  suddenly;  and  it  ought  to  be  superfluous  to  point 
out  why. 

Yet  it  would  undoubtedly  be  well  for  people  to 
have  more,  just  as  fast  as  they  can  make  it:  for  that 
will  be  no  faster  than  they  are  apt  to  use  it  well — 
and  there  is  hope,  as  we  have  said  more  than  once 
and  shall  give  facts  for  later,  that  the  ability  to  pro- 
duce it  *  and  to  use  it,  are  fast  being  evolved  together. 

*  The  wealth  in  the  United  States,  is  reported  by  the  Census 
to  have  increased  as  follows.  We  shall  find  evidence  later 
(Chapter  XXIII)  that  the  poor  have  received  a  larger  proportion 
of  it  than  the  rich.  In  1850,  it  was  $308  per  head;  in  i860, 
$514;  in  1870,  $780;  in  1880,  $850;  in  1890,  $1039;  andini9oo, 

$12.0. 


222  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  235  b 

But  must  each  man  himself  produce  unaided  all  he 
can  have?  Not  by  any  means:  inventors  and  or- 
ganizers are  constantly  enabling  other  people  to  pro- 
duce more.  Consequently  a  laborer  in  a  civilized 
nation  has  more  than  a  king  in  a  barbarous  one;  but 
men  seldom  appreciate  what  they  have,  when  others 
have  more. 

Not  only  would  communism  fail  to 
luVa'iiWewhile^^  '^^^^  everybody  rich,  even  for  a  moment, 
but  what  wealth  (?)  it  did  give  the  very 
poorest,  would  all  soon  be  either  frittered  away,  or 
back  again  in  the  hands  of  Ability.  As  said  before,  the 
machinery  has  to  be  worked  by  human  nature:  at  the 
outset,  communism  would  make  the  lazy  and  shiftless 
profit  at  the  expense  of  the  energetic  and  saving ;  while 
after  the  outset,  the  shiftless  would,  just  as  now,  soon 
waste  what  they  had,  not  only  in  extravagance  but  in 
foolish  schemes,  and  want  a  new  division;  and  there 
would  then  be  less  to  divide:  the  shiftless  would  have 
235  (d)  and  then  already  uscd  Up  their  share ;  and  com- 
there  would  be  munism  would  havc  taken  away  from 
less  than  notv.  Ability  all  temptation  to  produce  more 
than  it  could  keep — that  is  to  say,  more  than  the 
average;  and  would  take  from  frugality  all  temptation 
to  save  more  than  the  average. 
235  (e).  Meaning-       To  Carry  out  any  scheme  of  communism, 

less  without  -^   .  i  i      r  i  •  j  i 

robbery.  government  would  01  course  have  either  to 

rob  the  present  means  of  production — factories,  mines, 
etc. — from  those  who  have  produced  and  saved,  or  to 
buy  them  under  eminent  domain  (78). 

As  to  eminent  domain,  of  course  the  communists 
differ  among  themselves,  as  people  advocating  ideas 
that  do  not  hold  together,  inevitably  must;  some 
advocate  eminent  domain,  while  some  go  so  far  as  to 
say  that  all  property  is  robbery — that  people  of  ability 
and  frugality  have  stolen  from  those  who  lack  them, 
and  that  the  community,  in  taking  all  the  land  and 
mines  and  factories  and  railroads  without  pay,  would 
only  take  possession  of  its  own. 

But  even  government's  exercising  eminent  domain 


§235/]  Personal  Property.  223 

over  everything,  and  paying  for  it,  would  leave  things 
just  as  they  are.  Everybod}^  would  get  paid  for  what 
he  has,  and  be  taxed  all  he  has,  to  pay  it. 

A  practical  diflficulty  not  yet  stated,  is 
Ijlj'Iaith  cannot  be  how  to  divide  up  a  ten-thousand-dollar 
being  de'^iloled.  ^ouse,  or  building-lot,  or  diamond  or 
picture  or  statue,  so  as  to  give  each  person 
his  twelve  hundred  dollars.  If  an  attempt  were  made 
to  give  each  a  share  in  the  diamond,  for  instance,  it 
is  hard  to  tell  what  ten  of  them  could  do  with  it.  They 
probably  could  not  hire  it  out  to  some  vain  woman 
each  night:  for,  as  nobody  would  be  worth  more  than 
$1,200,  no  woman  could  pretend  the  diamond  to  be 
hers.  As  to  the  picture  and  statue,  perhaps  they 
could  be  exhibited,  if  enough  people  worth  only  $1,200 
apiece  would  pay  to  see  them.  But  as  to  the  house 
and  building-lot,  nobody  could  afford  to  live  in  the  house 
or  even  to  make  it  over  into  a  tenement;  and  nobody 
could  afford  to  build  on  the  lot,  unless  under  a  syndicate 
arrangement.  People  who  object  to  corporations  are 
generally  the  very  ones  who  would  make  it  necessary 
for  everything  worth  over  $1,200,  to  be  run  by  a  cor- 
poration. 

There  appears,  then,  to  be  no  escaping  the  general 
conclusion  that  civilization  rests  largely  on  things  that 
cost  more  than  a  thousand  dollars  apiece,  and  which 
cannot  be  divided,  or  even  used  to  any  advantage  when 
held  in  shares;  and  that  these  things  are  the  prizes 
which  Nature  holds  out  to  men  of  great  ability,  to 
stimulate  them  to  do  all  they  can  to  invent  and  organize 
and. regulate,  so  as  to  increase  and  cheapen  things  for 
the  public  good.  Consequently,  if  you  want  to  intro- 
duce Communism,  you  must  begin  by  wiping  civiliza- 
tion out.  In  short,  Nature  did  not  make  this  for  a  com- 
munistic world,  but  as  one  where  wealth  is  the  first 
condition  of  effective  industry  and  the  highest  art,  as 
well  as  the  legitimate  stimulus  to  invention,  energy  and 
capacity,  and  their  legitimate  reward. 

But  that  is,  of  course,  a  hard  conclusion  for  the  men 
lacking  in  invention,  energy  and  capacity;   and  among 


224  ^^^  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  235  / 

the  many  ways  proposed  for  making  them  as  well  oflE 
as  anybody,  there  are  many  which  do  not  involve  the 
impossibilities  of  Communism,  altho  they  all  have  im- 
possibilities of  their  own. 


CHAPTER   XIX. 

PERSONAL    PROPERTY    (CONTINUED). 

Schemes  for  Distributing  it  more  Evenly  {Continued). 
(II)  Socialism. 

Chief  among  the  schemes  for  giving 
'  °*^'^  '^'^'  the  lazy  and  incapable  the  rewards  of  the 
industrious  and  capable,  without  attempting  to  divide 
everything;  is  that  of  merely  putting  all  industries 
under  the  control  of  government,  and  dividing  up 
product  equally,  and  thus  giving  the  poor  an  equal 
share  in  the  profits.     This  is  Socialism. 

The  idea  at  least  does  away  with  the  objection  to 
dividing  up  or  holding-in-common  things  which  would 
be  useless  if  divided  up  or  held  in  common,  and  it  at 
least  glozes  over  the  objection  to  putting  the  capital 
of  the  frugal  directly  into  the  hands  of  the  shiftless: 
it  wants  merely  the  product  given  to  them.  It  pro- 
poses, instead,  to  put  the  capital  in  the  hands  of  the 
politicians,  and  have  them  give  the  shiftless  an  even 
share  of  the  product — so  far  as  the  politicians  make 
any — and  do  not  keep  it  for  themselves.  That  would 
at  least  divide  up  among  the  poor  the  profits  now 
wasted  by  the  rich,  if  the  politicians  were  honest,  and 
if  the  profits  were  to  be  produced.  But  as  profits 
depend  on  Ability,  and  Ability  needs  them  to  stimu- 
late it,  if  you  take  them  away  from  Ability,  to  divide 
up  among  those  who  lack  Ability,  it  is  pretty  hard  to 
see  who  is  going  to  produce  them.     But  at  least  every- 

225 


2  26  The  Protection  oj  Rights.  [§  ^36  a 

body  would  get  wages :  there  would  be  no  unemployed. 
But  nobody  would  get  as  much  wages  as 
I'^uidfoZfe''  now.  As  soon  as  Ability  flags,  demand 
for  the  labor  for  which  Ability  finds  work, 
must  flag,  and  wages  must  fall;  invention  must  flag; 
production  must  flag,  and  the  world  must  grow  poorer. 

If  government  is  to  keep  the  demand  for  labor  con- 
stant ,  the  question  is : .  who  is  to  pay  it  from  decreased 
production  ? 

Ability  might  be  stimulated  to  increase  production 

by  giving  it  high  office  in  superintending  government 

00c  /fci  ;  *•  industries,  but  to  only  a  limited  extent  in 
236  (b).  Impmcti-  .'  J  ,    r        , 

cabiiity  of  poiiti-  any  coudition  can  we  foresee,  and  for  two 
cai  management.  ^^^^  reasons.  We  uow  scldom  pay  govern- 
ment officers  salaries  that  honest  men,  unless  already 
well  off,  can  afford  to  accept;  and  as  long  as  the  base 
and  ignorant  are  permitted  to  vote,  and  so  often  elect 
the  base  and  ignorant  to  office,  the  best  men  could  not  be 
put  in  office  as  often  as  necessary,  even  if  we  were 
wise  enough  to  pay  them  properly.  So  far,  even  those 
who  can  afford  it,  do  not  always  take  office  when  it 
is  offered  them,  because  of  the  humiliating  obligations 
to  the  bosses  that  office  sometimes  imposes.  The  great 
difficulty  even  now  is  to  get  government  officers  who 
can  and  will  do  even  the  simplest  things  honestly:  it 
is  one  of  our  great  misfortunes  that  the  men  capable 
of  guiding  industry  cannot  often  enough  be  got  into 
public  office  of  any  kind. 

If,  then,  we  had  to  depend  for  the  good  conduct  of  all 
our  industries,  on  the  combinations  of  circumstances 
where  good  men  can  get  office  and  will  take  it,  those  com- 
-,„,,,        ,    binations    so    seldom    occur,    that,    altho 

236  (c).   Losses  to  ,  ^  .       .     '  . 

education,  charity  there  are  many  good  and  patriotic  men  m 
and  liberty.  office,  too  oftcu,  instead  of  having  the  best 

brains  competing  with  each  other,  as  now,  to  supply 
our  wants  cheaply  and  in  great  variety,  we  should  have 
to  put  up  with  what  men  capable  only  in  politics,  might 
provide. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  socialist  argument  that  because 
government  already  secures   (if  it  does)  fairly  compe- 


§  236  ^]  Personal  Property.  227 

tent  managers  for  a  few  natural  monopolies,  it  can  secure 
them  for  productive  industries,  because  monopolies 
yield  results  v/ith  much  poorer  management. 

The  same  is  true  of  the  argument  from  government's 
securing  more  or  less  competent  managers  of  education, 
including  the  museums,  and  gardens  of  botany  and 
zoology.  In  fact,  the  managers  have  been  very  seldom 
secured  by  any  pure  democracy — especially  by  ours, 
which  has  no  aristocratic  traditions.  Our  managers  for 
such  institutions  are  most  all  secured  by  close  private 
corporations,  and  no  such  managers  aim  at  cheap  pro- 
duction, or  even  great  financial  results  for  themselves: 
they  do  their  work  mainly  from  love  of  it  and  for  per- 
sonal development. 

236  (d).  Forcing  One  of  the  schemes  of  socialism  is  to 
^^i''^y-  force  ability  to  guide  labor,  just  as  it  is 

to  force  the  laborers  to  work.  But  while  a  man  can  be 
forced  to  work  in  some  sort  of  fashion  with  his  body, 
there  is  no  forcing  him  to  do  his  best  with  his  mind. 
He  can  only  be  tempted. 

"Well,  then",  some  socialists  ask,  "why  not  pay 
men  of  ability  large  incomes  to  serve  the  public? "  But 
that  they  get  large  incomes  now,  is  what  most  of  the 
socialists  complain  of.  Yet  now  the  men  of  ability  are 
not  sure  of  the  incomes;  if  they  were  sure  of  their 
incomes  as  salaries,  they  would  no  longer  have  a  stimulus 
to  do  their  best.  Yet  to  give  them,  instead  of  salaries, 
large,  but  necessarily  uncertain,  shares  of  production, 
would  be  to  give  them  just  what  they  are  getting  now, 
and  just  what  the  socialists  want  to  take  away  from 
them.  Should  real  socialism  come  in  then,  it  can  only 
come  in  by  reducing  the  production  of  Ability. 
236  ce;  Theargu-  ''■^  answcr  to  tliis,  it  may  be  urged  that 
ment  from  expert-  government  has  already  been  building 
houses  for  the  poor,  supplying  them  with 
water  and  light,  and  making  boots  and  clothes  for  armies 
at  a  saving;  that  a  great  many  people  sadly  lack  these 
good  things  and  most  others;  and  that  all  the  things 
made  by  private  enterprise  are  often  made  at  wages  that 


228  TJie  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  236  ^ 

afford  but  little  comfort.  But  what  has  been  done  in 
housebuilding  and  gas  and  even  water,  has  not  yet  been 
shown  to  have  been  successfully  done.  We  must  not 
forget  that  agitation  has  already  been  strong  in  England 
— the  very  headquarters  of  "municipal  trading",  to 
drive  government  back  toward  its  old  functions  of  pro- 
tecting rights. 

When    things    have    been    supplied    by 

236  (f).  Can  be  4.    r         .  i  j  j 

undertaken  when  government  lor  the  army  and  navy,  and 
ZTcTstomef.'^^  (tho  in  a  less  degree)  in  the  case  of  gas 
and  electric  light,  there  was  a  certainty  of 
the  customer.  The  government  stood  ready  to  take 
the  clothes  for  the  army  and  the  light  for  the  streets; 
and  the  producer  made  army  and  navy  supplies  only 
to  the  government's  order.  There  was  no  call  for 
some  of  the  rarest  and  most  .difficult  powers  of  Ability 
— finding  custom,  avoiding  bad  debts,  and  anticipat- 
ing just  what  and  just  how  much  the  market  is  going 
to  require.  True,  if  nobody  but  the  government 
produced  anything  for  the  people,  government  would 
be  sure  of  its  customers.  But  no  more  customers 
would  have  the  money  to  pay  then  than  now,  and  those 
having  it  might  like  a  choice  of  shops,  and  even  of  articles. 
They  might  not  like  to  dress  in  Tammany  style.  Be- 
sides, we  do  not  all  dress  in  uniform,  and  it  is  only  iri 
uniform  that  government  has  yet  succeeded  as  a  tailor. 
236  (g)  Private  ^^^  government  could  of  course  have  a 
initiative  essential  great  many  shops  and  styles,  but  if  they 
to  variety.  were  all  under  the  management  of  Tam- 

many Hall,  they  would  be  apt  to  be  the  sort  of  shops 
that  prudent  people  avoid;  and  altho  the  government 
officers  would  not  nominally  be  conducting  the  shops 
for  their  own  profit,  and  tho  some  really  might  not,  we 
know  from  experience  that  too  many  would. 

Government  could  still  leave  the  private  shops  open, 
but  only  if  it  courted  failure.  Managers  chosen  by 
Nature  to  control  political  pulls,  could  never  compete 
with  those  chosen  by  Nature  to  manage  industry. 
There  is  no  argument  that  they  could,  in  the  fact  that 
government  railways  and  tramways  are  often  operated 


^  2^  h]  Personal  Property.  229 

side  by  side  with  private  ones:  for  all  have  monopolies 
of  their  own  routes.  To  succeed  in  competitive  business, 
236  (h).  General  government  would  have  to  take  away  the 
government  pro-     citizcn's  powcr  to  purchase  anywhere  he 

auction  attacHs  .  i        •       j_  j_i  j  •     •        , 

Property,  Contract  pleased,  just  as  the  extreme  municipal 
and  Chanty.  traders  are  beginning  to  do  in  England  now. 

This  would  not  only  deprive  him  of  the  benefits  of  Com- 
petition, but  of  two  other  institutions  that  men  have  been 
laboring  upon  through  all  civilization,  and  upon  which, 
in  fact,  all  civilization  rests:  I  mean  Private  Property 
and  Contract.  With  them  would  go  production  itself, 
all  education  of  a  higher  grade  than  government  pro- 
vides, and  the  very  possibility  of  charity. 

The  scheme  would  upset  the  institution  of  Private 
Property,  because  private  property  is  simply  one  of  the 
consequences  of  ability.  Other  things  even,  a  man  will 
have  as  much  of  one  as  of  the  other;  tho  of  course 
other  things  are  not  always  even,  because  an  able  man 
may  deliberately  devote  his  abilities  to  something  that 
he  knows  will  not  pay  much,  and  sometimes  "accidents  " 
come  in.  Still,  any  system  that  denies  ability  free 
swing,   at  once  attacks   the  right  to   create  property. 

The  system  would  attack  Contract,  because  if  the 
state  is  the  only  employer  of  Capital,  Ability  and  Labor, 
of  course  any  one  of  them  has  to  accept  what  employ- 
ment the  state  gives,  on  the  state's  own  terms.  No  one 
of  them  has  any  more  opportunity  to  contract,  on  terms 
satisfactory  to  itself,  than  the  veriest  slave  bom  to  re- 
main in  his  status. 

The  scheme  attacks  Charity,  those  who  advocate  it 
would  say,  by  doing  away  with  all  needs  of  charity; 
but  those  who  oppose  it  say  that  there  would  be  more 
need  of  charity  than  now,  because  there  would  be  less 
production ;  and  there  would  be  no  surplus  of  wealth  in 
anybody's  hands  to  be  willingly  spared  for  charities  and 
the  higher  education.  The  idea  that  people  with  the 
moderate  incomes  that  all  would  then  have,  would  con- 
sent to  be  taxed  for  such  things,  is  of  course  advanced, 
but  is  too  absurd  to  be  worth  discussing. 


230  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  236  i 

2Z&(ih  Futility  of  If  government  paid  in  bonds  for  the 
attempting  it  by  present  means  of  production  (there  is  not 
eminent  domain.  ^^^^^  enough  to  pay),  bonds  must  bear 
interest,  and  even  if  government  management  should 
produce  the  interest  (which  it  probably  would  not), 
where  would  be  the  gain  in  government  simply  working 
the  industries,  and  paying  away  all  the  production  above 
wages  (if  any),  in  the  -form  of  interest  on  the  bonds, 
to  the  same  people  who  now  work  out  the  interest 
for  themselves  ?  Of  course  people  generally  would  then 
236  (jh  Effect  on  get  all  that  the  industries  might  produce 
laborers.  ovcr  and  above  the  interest  on  the  bonds, 

but  after  wages  and  interest  were  paid  (assuming  that 
they  wotdd  be  paid),  the  surplus  would  not  be  enough 
to  be  worth  considering.  The  wealth  that  the  socialists 
are  after  could  not  reach  them  in  that  way  any  more 
than  it  does  now:  for  the  simple  reason  that  no  more 
would  be  produced  than  now  (if  as  much),  and,  as  the 
census  reports  of  present  industries  show,  even  if  pro- 
duction were  kept  up  to  the  present  standard,  an  even 
division  would  not  ^deld  an  average  of  much  more  than 
two  dollars  a  day  for  each  wage-earner,  even  putting  the 
managers  and  their  shares  in  with  the  rest. 

But  advocates  of  the  scheme  say  there  would  be 
more,  because  they  think  that  under  socialism,  most 
men,  having  so  much  more  interest  in  the  production, 
would  work  that  much  the  harder.  But  there  seem 
to  be  a  good  many  men  who,  if  they  were 
IfuaJiness'^^'"'"'"  ^urc  of  sharing  the  product,  as  in  the 
Paris  public  shops,  and  under  the  English 
poor  law  (34),  would  not  work  at  all.  Unless  a  boss 
has  the  power  of  discharge,  it  is  hard  to  see  who  is 
effectively  to  tell  the  workman  what  to  do  to  make 
his  work  count. 

In  Paris  the  government  officers  did  not  have  the 
power  of  discharge,  but  if  they  have,  what  becomes  of 
the  socialism.?  Men  could  not  be  forced  to  work  pro- 
ductively, and  even  if  that  were  possible,  it  would  be 
only  by  bringing  the  free  citizen  back  under  the  slave's 
lash. 


§236m]  Personal  Property.  231 

236  (U.  would  cie-       Moreover,    government   would   have   to 
stroy  freedom.       ^qH   people   how    and   wiien   tney    snoula 
^ork— a  man  would  no  longer  be  able  to  choose  where 
he  should  work  and  what  he  should  work  at,  and  what 
he  should  take  for  his  work,  nor  where  he  should  buy 
and  of  what  producer  he  should  buy:  for  there  would 
be  but  one  producer— the  enormous  government  trust. 
The  whole  thing  would  be  a  slavery  more  minute  than 
any  yet  devised.     There  is  no  control  as  senseless  as  that 
of  a  majority.     The  scheme  of  sociaUsm  is  that  each  shall 
be  the  slave  of  all :  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  civihza- 
tion  had  been  made  by  able  men  choosing  work,  domg 
it,  and  directing  it,  in  their  own  interest.     Even  if  they 
have  had  to  direct  slaves,  it  was  the  masters  who  made 
the  civiHzation,  not  the  slaves.     True,  the  laborers  m 
Greece   and    Rome   were   slaves,    and   those   countries 
managed  to  cut  a  very  decent  figure,  but  the  voters  were 
not  slaves. 

236  rmi.  neun-        But  in  our  present  state    sociahsm  is 
employed.  counted  upon  to   dispose   or   tne  tern  Die 

question  of  the  unemployed,   and  to   give  everybody 
good  wages,  but  many  people  have  not  the  ability  to 
earn  good  wages.     Then  the  socialists   ask:  why  not 
have    government    give    good    wages    anyhow?     You 
admit  that  government  should  promote  the  general  con- 
venience in  many  ways :  why  not  in  the  most  important 
way  of  all— give  what  it  has  become  the  fashion  to  call 
a   "hving  wage"?     Ought   not   everybody  to  have  a 
decent  living?     Yes,  if  he  can  earn  it;    and  of  course 
everybody  ought  to  be  able  to  earn  a  decent  Hving, 
just  as  evervbody  ought  to  be  decent.     But  unfortu- 
nately, not  everybody  is;  and  we  have  already  seen  the 
effect  of  the  attempt  to  give  everybody  decent  wages, 
under  the  English  poor  law,  and  in  the  French  pubhc 
workshops  (34).     It  is  better  a  thousand  times  to  receive 
charity  direct  than  disguised  as  unearned  wages.     That 
step  would  fatally  lower  the  standard  of  industry  and 
—what  is  far  worse— the  standard  of  morality:   one  is 
frank  mendicancy,  the  other  is  disguised  robbery. 


232  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  237 

237.  Names  Social-  Enthusiasts  for  any  specific  panacea 
vidualism."  '  naturally  invent  a  name  for  it,  and  then 

gravitate  into  some  one  name  for  all  methods  out- 
side of  it.  As  soon  as  the  two  names  are  contrasted, 
they  give  an  impression  of'  equal  weight  in  the  re- 
spective ideas  which  they  connote.  But  this  impres- 
sion is  very  misleading.-  Thus  while  the  disciples  of 
Hahnemann  (if  there  are  any  real  "high  dilutionists " 
left)  apply  the  term  homeopathy  to  their  doctrine,  in 
the  apparently  balanced  term  allopathy  they  include 
all  the  doctrines  that  have  been  accumulated  outside 
of  their  own.  On  one  side,  the  word  homeopathy  in- 
cludes only  one  idea  on  the  subject;  but  on  the  other 
side,  the  word  allopathy  includes  all  the  experience  of 
the  human  race.  The  same  is  true  of  the  words 
socialism  and  individuahsm.  To  the  superficial,  they 
appear  to  represent  two  ideas  that  balance  each  other; 
but  the  fact  is  that  socialism  expresses  a  mere  theory, 
and  represents  no  experience  whatever;  while  individ- 
ualism stands  for  the  whole  of  human  experience  on 
the  subject.  Socialism  has  never  been  tried,  all  the 
progress  of  mankind  has  been  made  under  "individual- 
ism". Greater  and  faster  progress  may  be  possible 
under  socialism,  as  it  may  be  under  any  scheme  that 
any  theorist  proposes;  but  there  is  no  experience  to 
prove  that  it  will  be,  while  every  atom  of  experience  so 
far,  goes  to  prove  that  it  will  not.  It  must  be  con- 
ceded, however,  that  the  proof  is  not  absolutely  con- 
clusive, any  more  than  is  the  proof  that  two  and  two 
will  not  sometime  make  five,  or  that  men  will  not  some- 
time live  forever.  It  may  even  be  farther  conceded 
that  in  vast  periods  of  time,  there  may  be  possible 
changes  in  human  nature  that  may  make  socialism 
possible.  There  are  even  some  grounds  for  conceding 
that  there  are  visible  factors  working  in  the  direction 
of  such  changes  in  human  nature,  and  this  concession 
may  be  made  even  in  face  of  the  facts  that  while  these 
words  are  being  written,  the  New  York  papers  hold 
circus  advertisements  attracting  people  to  see  a  young 
woman  and  an  automobile  turning  somersaults  in  the 


§  237  ^]  Personal  Property.  235 

air,  the  attractions  of  the  performance  being  enhanced 
by  calling  it  "The  Dip  of  Death".  But  no  more  than 
all  this  can  reasonably  be  conceded,  and  even  these 
concessions  leave  no  room  to  think  of  socialism  as 
workable  under  any  conditions  so  near  as  to  be  of 
any  practical  interest  to  any  living  man. 

There  have  been  a  considerable  number  of  people, 
from  Ruskin  and  Tolstoy  down,  whose  emotion  and 
imagination  are  far  in  excess  of  their  information  and 
reflection,  and  who  jump  in  fancy  to  tlfe  realization 
of  the  socialistic  dreams,  without  studying  what  founda- 
tion Nature  has  provided  for  them ;  or  if  a  foundation 
is  possible,  how  long  must  be  taken  to  evolve  it. 

This  word  socialism  has  lately  come  into 
l^JagVe  name!'^'"  such  vcry  frequent  use  (and  abuse)  that  it 
calls  for  a  little  more  consideration.  In 
a  long-past-midnight  discussion  between  the  present 
writer  and  an  eminent  professor  of  sociology,  and  an 
eminent  speculative  writer  on  Utopias,  the  last  two  of 
whom  call  themselves  socialists,  all  three  found  them- 
selves agreed  that  government  ownership  of  monop- 
oly franchises,  and  regulation  of  their  operation  by 
lessees  for  limited  terms,  is  all  that  can  reasonably 
be  advocated  under  present  conditions.  The  two 
"socialists"  then  claimed  that  their  interlocutor,  in 
agreeing  with  them,  admitted  himself  a  socialist.  His 
counterclaim  was  that  they,  in  agreeing  with  him, 
proved  themselves  not  to  be  socialists;  whereupon  the 
two  agreed  between  themselves  that  they  needed  a  new 
word  to  indicate  their  real  position;  and  an  ineffect- 
ive resort  was  made  to  the  Greek  dictionaries.  If  new 
labels  are  to  be  found  for  all  the  different  positions 
held  by  those  now  included  under  the  label  socialism, 
all  the  dictionaries  will  be  worked  pretty  hard;  and 
probably  names  for  the  modern  ideas  will  have  to  be 
constructed  from  the  modern  languages. 

The  fact  is  that  the  word  socialism  is  now  made 
to  do  duty  for  nearly  every  hoped-for  cure  of  the 
defects  of  society — indeed  for  nearly  every  dream,  how- 


234  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§237  a 

ever  wild,  of  better  conditions.  Nearly  every  unedu- 
cated or  unevenly  educated  person  who  is  dissatisfied 
with  existing  conditions,  calls  himself  a  socialist,  and 
many  call  themselves  so  on  account  of  some  opinion 
that  may  be  anywhere  from  a  belief  that  poverty  is  a 
bad  thing,  up  to  a  conviction  that  if  the  state  owned 
and  administered  all  the  means  of  production,  poverty 
would  disappear.  Between  the  extreme  positions,  are 
at  least  the  following  stopping-places,  some  of  the 
occupants  of«any  one  of  which,  like  to  call  themselves 
socialists,  and  discriminating  labels  for  each  of  which 
may  be  desirable:  I.  The  state  should  regulate  much 
237  (b).  At  least  rnore  thoroughly  the  use  of  all  natural 
three  meanings,  monopolies,  including  the  municipal  fran- 
chises— waterworks,  trolleys,  lighting  plants,  etc.  II. 
Municipalities  should  not  part  with  the  fees  of  their 
franchises  for  these  things,  but  only  lease  them, 
so  as  to  control  them  more  effectively,  and  get 
the  benefit  of  the  unearned  increment.  III.  Munici- 
palities— or  the  state — or  the  nation,  should  operate 
the  franchises  as  well  as  own  them.  Now  many  men 

who  hold  the  doctrines  up  to  this  point,  would  warmly 
disclaim  the  name  of  socialist,  and  probably  very  few 
persons  entitled  to  speak  with  authority  would  apply 
that  name  to  any  step  short  of  government  going  be- 
yond the  farthest  of  these  points,  to  a  fourth — beyond 
the  natural  monopolies,  and  appropriating  the  means  of 
production  which  are  not  naturally  monopolistic. 
238.  Socialism  In  this  fourth  use  of  the  term,  socialism 

against  competition,  means  taking  out  of  the  fields  of  com- 
petition the  things  wherein  competition  is  possible — 
depriving  the  world  of  the  initiative  and  energy  that 
competition  breeds — of  what  has  been  well  called  "the 
life  of  trade".  While  up  to  this  point,  government  ac- 
tivity certainly  should  increase  with  government  ability 
— in  other  words,  with  political  intelligence  and  morality, 
beyond  this  point  government  interference  with  what 
we  ordinarily  mean  by  "industries",  would  be  inter- 
ference with  what  has  raised  society  above  the  stage 
of  mere  militarism. 


§  240]  Personal  Property.  235 

To  the  claim  that  sociaHsm  could  have 
i?Mndivfduai?sm"  raised  society,  and  have  raised  it  better, 
one  answer  is  that  it  never  did;  and 
another  answer  is  that  no  considerable  body  of  pro- 
fessed socialists  have  ever  agreed  on  the  details  for 
working  out  any  consistent  scheme  by  which  they  them- 
selves claim  that  it  ever  could.  On  the  contrary,  they 
are  always  quarreling  among  themselves.  Moreover, 
there  is  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  best  results  of 
what  various  men  claim  could  be  attained  by  the  variety 
of  schemes  which  they  call  socialism,  are  being  more  and 
more  attained  through  the  only  process  of  which  the 
world  has  had  experience — through  individual  capacity 
competing  for  private  property,  and  voluntarily  apply- 
ing an  increased  portion  of  private  property  toward  the 
results  that  all  good  socialists  and  all  good  men  desire. 
„,„  e  .  ,.        .      Most  of  the  people  who  believe  in  so- 

240.  Socialism  and     .    ,.  ,     ,  1  ,        .   , 

Magic  an  iliustra-     cialism  (whatever  they  may  mean  by  it) 

^'°"'  attribute  to  it  the  power  to  produce  these 

results  by  some  sort  of  magic.  For  instance,  after  the 
San  Francisco  earthquake,  the  New  York  Times  con- 
tained the  following  interesting  letter : 

How  Earthquakes  and  Fires  would  Lose  Their  Terror 
UNDER  Socialism. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  New  York  Times: 

In  the  first  place  such  a  horror  would  not  be  possible  under 
established  Socialism,  for  every  building  constructed  by  and 
for  a  socialist  sj^stem  of  society  would  be  fire-proof,  and  in  a 
great  measure  earthquake-proof.  Cheap,  flimsy,  crowded,  in- 
flammable, and  unsafe  constructions  would  find  no  place  in  a 
city  built  for  use  and  not  for  profit. 

Given,  however,  present  conditions,  but  with  Socialism  just 
adopted  as  a  National  system,  the  disaster  at  San  Francisco, 
aside  from  the  irreparable  loss  of  life,  would  simply  mean 
that  each  of  us  throughout  the  co-operated  Nation  had  suffered 
a  loss  equivalent  to  a  few  hours  of  our  productive  labor.  The 
whole  resource  and  energy  of  the  Nation  would  be  aroused  to 
replace  San  Francisco  in  a  grander, more  beautiful  condition  than 
ever  before.  The  haunting  fear  of  want  that  now  oppresses 
thousands  that  were  accounted  well-to-do  citizens  would  not  be 
present.  Thousands  whose  lives  are  shipwrecked  by  this 
calamity,    and  whom  the   most   generous   aid   possible   under 


236  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§240 

capitalism  cannot  restore  to  hope  and  happiness,  would,  in  a 
few  weeks,  recover  their  full  former  condition.  With  hope 
assured,  they  would  rebuild  their  city  on  lines  of  beauty  and 
safety,  drawing  on  the  surplus  wealth  of  the  co-operated  Nation 
for  all  labor  and  materials  required.  In  that  new  city  none  of 
the  dives,  traps,  or  squalid  quarters  which  are  now  wiped  out 
would  ever  be  replaced.  With  no  incentive  for  greed,  graft 
or  unjust  gain  the  city  of  the  Golden  Gate  would  arise  the 
gem  of  the  Pacific  Coast.  The  temporary  loss,  in  all  except 
the  loss  of  life,  would  result  in  lasting  gain  by  affording  the 
opportunity  to  build  the  City  Beautiful.  Private  land  titles 
would  not  obstruct  the  public  welfare,  and  the  lesson  would  be 
worth  all  the  fearful  cost.  Capitalisrn,  with  all  its  generous 
impulses,  now  temporarily  aroused,  cannot  succeed  as  Socialism 
would  do. 

This  is  a  wider  extension  of  socialism  than  I  remember 
seeing  proposed  before.  All  the  earlier  propositions  that 
I  have  seen,  seem  to  have  indicated  that  all  the  property 
of  relatively  small  communities — states  at  the  utmost, 
should  be  owned  by  all  the  citizens  in  common,  irre- 
spective of  who  devises  it,  produces  it,  or  preserves 
it.  There  seem  to  be  fatal  objections  to  even  that 
scheme,  among  them  its  mad  injustice;  but  the 
objections  do  not  appear  to  have  deterred  this  writer 
from  proposing  to  have  all  the  property  in  America 
owned  collectively  by  all  the  people  in  America — a 
scheme  that  would  involve  difficulties  of  administration 
so  far  beyond  any  now  faced,  as  to  be  simply  unimagi- 
nable. 

p  Possibly  the  writer  did  not  realize  how 

agencies  toward  far,  under  the  despised  agencies  now  at 
same  ends.  work,  the  losses  of  San  Francisco  actually 

are  distributed.  For  instance,  not  to  speak  of  the 
subscriptions  for  relief,  eighteen  millions  of  the  losses 
are  to  be  paid  by  insurance  companies  in  the  little  city 
of  Hartford  alone.  And  the  stock  of  those  companies 
is  by  no  means  all  owned  in  Hartford,  but  is  distributed 
through  the  whole  country.  Considerable  of  the  insur- 
ance thus  distributed  is  in  England:  so  the  socialist's 
dream  of  our  all  being  "members  of  one  another"  is 
already  realized  through  the  sordid  channels  of  self- 
interest,  more  widely  even  than  in  his  dream:   for  that 


§  242]  Personal  Property.  237 

stopped  at  the  borders  of  our  own  land.  Moreover, 
such  sharing  of  each  other's  losses — and  gains  too,  is 
constantly  increasing. 

Yet  his  completed  picture  is  at  least  a  beautiful  one. 
No  one  can  doubt  that  the  results  of  his  prophecies  are 
desirable,  but  how  are  they  to  be  attained  any  faster 
than  we  are  slowly  approaching  them  now?  The  only 
indication  given  in  the  letter  is  that  "socialism"  should 
be  "adopted  as  a  national  system" — apparently  that 
Congress  should  pass  some  sort  of  a  law,  or  that  some 
sort  of  a  constitutional  amendment  should  be  passed, 
to  the  effect  that  everything  shall  be  owned  by  every- 
body, share  and  share  ahke;  and  that  everything  shall 
be  (lone  for  everybody  by  everybody  else,  combined  as 
the  state;  and  that  nobody  shall  have  anything  or  do 
anything  for  his  selfish  self  alone.  When  this  law  or 
constitutional  amendment  is  passed,  nobody  shall  be 
selfish  or  grasping,  or  inclined  to  hide  away  anything,  or 
do  scamped  work,  or  disobey  any  laws  that  may  there- 
after be  enacted. 

Then  the  men  with  capacity  enough  to  direct  building 
operations,  will  be  made  more  honest  and  capable  by 
depriving  them  of  their  property  and  rewards,  and 
paying  them  the  same  that  the  men  they  direct  are  paid. 
They  are  going  to  be  more  careful,  energetic,  resourceful 
— in  short,  build  better  buildings,  because  they  can  get 
no  direct  benefit  from  building  better  buildings. 

Some  people  who  call  themselves  socialists  would  say : 

"  Oh  no !     They  must  be  paid  in  proportion  to  what  they 

accomplish."     But  that  is  just  what  the  world  has  been 

trying  to  bring  about  for  several  thousands  of  years,  and 

has  come  a  great  deal  nearer  to  bringing  about  during 

the  past  century  or  two  than  ever  before ;  and  it  is  just 

what  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  "socialists"  in  a 

thousand  do  not  want:    they  want  everybody  paid  the 

same,  no  matter  what  each  accomplishes. 

We   already   have   laws  in  most  cities 

242.  No  magic  in    fQj.    moderately    secure    building;    but    in 
laws  and  nanfies.  -'        ,  i      -i  i- 

Spite  of  them,  much  crazy  building  goes  on. 

But  our  sociaUst  seems  to  think  that  if  we  pass  a  law 


238  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  242 

requiring  many  times  the  care  from  builders  that  is 
anywhere  required  now,  if  we  will  merely  include  it 
with  a  lot  of  other  laws  under  the  label  "socialism", 
people  are  going  to  obey  the  laws  better;  and  that 
if  these  laws  remove  all  reward  of  care,  such  laws  will 
secure  the  care. 

Or  can  our  writer  intend  to  go  so  far  as  to  imply  that 
if  the  wisdom  of  Leland  Stanford  and  his  trustees  had 
been  replaced  by  that  of  the  average  building  commission 
which  universal  suffrage  would  provide ;  and  if  the  name 
socialistic  were  given  to  such  commission,  it  would  turn 
out  better  work  than  Stanford  and  his  trustees  did. 

After  the  great  Baltimore  fire,  wise  and  generous 
people  hoped  to  "rebuild  their  city  on  lines  of  beauty 
and  safety",  but  the  majority,  who  consisted  of  stupid 
and  selfish  people,  prevented  all  but  a  moiety  of  the 
schemes  from  being  carried  out.  Now  it  would  be 
interesting  to  know  how  long,  on  an  average,  the  social- 
ists think  it  would  take  the  stupid  and  selfish  people 
who  constitute  the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of 
San  Francisco  and  of  all  other  places  yet  discovered 
outside  of  socialistic  dreams,  to  pass  a  set  of  laws,  even 
under  the  label  of  socialism,  that  would  really  "rebuild 
their  city  on  lines  of  beauty  and  safety  "  more  effectually 
than  it  is  going  to  be  built  under  present  laws ;  and  how 
much  longer  it  would  take  them  to  get  the  laws  carried 
out  after  they  had  passed  them. 

All  the  ingenuity  and  morality  that  San  Francisco 
has  been  able  to  muster,  have  been  trying  for  half  a 
century  to  get  rid  of  the  city's  "dives,  traps  and  squalid 
quarters ' ' ;  but  Chinatown  has  gone  on  burrowing  under 
itself,  and  then  under  its  burrows. 

"And  there  would  be  no  incentive  for  greed,  graft 
and  unjust  gain",  says  our  prophet  under  the  inspira- 
tion of  socialism.  All  over  the  world,  since  even  long 
before  Christianity  came,  good  men  have  been  legisla- 
ting against  "greed,  graft  and  unjust  gain",  but  these 
things  continue.  If  the  ingenuity  and  morality  that 
have  been  fighting  them,  had  labeled  their  efforts 
socialism,  would  they  have  had  an  access  of    magic 


§  243]  Personal  Property.  239 

power?  Or  would  they  have  had  to  change  the  char- 
acter of  their  efforts?  If  so,  why  didn't  they?  Because 
they  had  not  enough  wisdom  or  conscience?  How  long 
then  will  it  take  to  acquire  enough  wisdom  and  con- 
science to  work  socialism,  assuming  that  enough  of  both 
may  sometime  be  within  human  attainment?  And  by 
what  methods  are  the  wisdom  and  conscience  to  be 
attained,  other  than  the  preaching,  teaching  and  general 
discipline  of  life,  that  have  given  us  our  present  modest 
supply  of  those  desirable  qualities.  Would  labeling 
ourselves  socialists  create  them?  Would  the  label  be 
more  effective  than  the  label  "Christian"  has  so  far 
been?  Would  the  label  give  "Capitalism  with  all  its 
generous  impvdses,  now  temporarily  aroused",  a  more 
chronic  amenability  to  those  influences?  And  could 
the  label  be  effectively  put  on  "Capitalism",  if  by  that 
word  is  meant  the  capacity  which  accumulates  capital, 
without  m.aterially  impairing  its  effectiveness? 

In  short,  is  the  word  socialism  as  used  in  the  letter, 
anything  more  than  a  name  for  a  dream  so  far  beyond 
any  means  of  realization,  as  to  make  it  of  no  interest, 
except  as  an  ideal,  to  any  living  being;  and  a  dream, 
like  most  dreams,  full  of  inconsistencies  that  make  it 
only  dreamable — not  thinkable? 

243.  Another  I*  may  be  worth  while  to   spend  a  few 

specimen.  minutes  with  one  more  of  the   latest  of 

these  philosophers.*  He  sums  up  his  preface  by 
asserting  that  the  capitalist  must  learn  that  socialism 
"demands  the  right,  nothing  more  or  less  than  the 
right".  As  if  the  problem  of  the  ages,  only  gradually 
approaching  solution,  and  never  quite  to  reach  it,  were 
not  simply  what  is  ' '  the  right ' ' ! 

He  says:  "The  gateway  of  opportunity  has  been 
closed,  and  closed  for  all  time.  Rockefeller  has  shut 
the  door  on  oil  .  .  .  and  Carnegie  on  steel."  As  if 
these  two  men  had  not  probably  set  more  young  men 
on  their  feet  than  any  two  men  in  history! 

*  Jack  London :    War  of  the  Classes. 


240  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  243 

He  says:  "The  proletariat  will  possess  itself  of  the 
government  .  .  .  and  run  the  business  of  the  country 
in  its  own  interest."  As  if  one  man  in  a  score  could 
run  business  at  all,  and  as  if  he  would  not  keep  a 
reasonably  careful  eye  on  his  own  interest  rather  than 
that  of  the  country! 

He  says:  "The  working-class  is  no  longer  losing  its 
strongest  and  most  capable  members.  There  men 
denied  room  for  their  ambition  in  the  capitalist  ranks 
remain  to  be  the  leaders  of  the  workers."  As  if  the 
leaders  of  the  capitalists  were  not  now  more  from  the 
working-class  than  ever  before! 

He  farther  says :  "Either  the  functions  of  private  cor- 
porations will  increase  till  they  absorb  the  central  govern- 
ment, or  the  functions  of  government  will  increase  till 
it  absorbs  the  corporations."  Either  the  inroads  of  the 
sea  will  increase  till  it  covers  the  land,  or  the  waste 
from  the  land  will  increase  till  it  fills  up  the  sea.  Both 
sets  of  propositions  seem  to  mean  something,  but,  like 
the  phrase  of  the  irresistible  ball  striking  the  impene- 
trable wall,  they  mean  nothing. 

244.  Need  and  -^  favorite  expression  of  the    ideals  of 

Desert.  socialism  is :    "  From  each  according  to  his 

ability,  to  each  according  to  his  need";  and  if  desert 
were  generally  measured  by  need,  a  beautiful  expres- 
sion it  would  be.  But  the  melancholy  fact  is  that, 
despite  many  exceptions,  desert  generally  varies  in- 
versely as  need — the  deserving  are  not  generally  needy, 
and  the  needy  are  not  generally  deserving.  Change 
the  expression  to  "From  each  according  to  his  ability, 
to  each  according  to  his  desert",  and  you  have  a 
very  intelligible  and  respectable  ideal,  and  one  toward 
which  all  the  ages  have  been  stumbling,  and  toward 
which  every  wise  philanthropy,  every  good  law,  every 
enlarged  communication,  every  facilitation  of  supply 
and  demand  meeting  each  other,  every  honest  trade 
and  every  honest  job,  are  leading  up;  and  from  which 
ever}''  enervating  and  confusing  dream,  every  disguised 
robbery,  every  pauperizing  charity,  every  unworkable 


§  245]  Personal  Property.  241 

statute,  every  obstruction  of  demand  and  supply,  every 
dishonest  trade  and  every  scamped  job,  are  keeping  us 
back. 

Try  to  reach  the  ideal  by  any  shorter  cut,  try  to 
determine  each  man's  desert  by  anything  but  the  re- 
sults of  his  efforts,  and  who  is  to  make  the  decision — 
a  committee  of  Tammany  Hall,  or  of  a  legislature,  or 
of  Congress,  or  of  the  labor  trusts,  or  of  the  capital 
trusts?  In  regard  to  the  very  needy,  it  has  long  been 
attempted  by  government  charit}'',  by  hospital  and  prison 
boards,  by  committees  of  churches,  and  by  charity  or- 
ganizations. So  far  it  has  been  very  imperfectly  done, 
but  no  man  has  yet  proposed  any  hopeful  organization 
for  doing  it  faster.  It  is  going  to  be  done  better — im- 
perceptibly better  to-morrow  than  to-day,  a  trifle  better 
next  week  than  this  week,  perceptibly  better  the  next 
decade  than  this  decade,  and  noticeably  better — better 
with  even  a  much  greater  difference,  this  century  than 
the  last  century;  as  it  was  vastly  better  the  last  century 
than  the  century  before.  And  all  this  betterment  is 
to  come  from  improvement  in  the  agencies  we  know, 
and  from  better  ones  evolved  from  them.  But  it  is  to 
be  less  rather  than  greater,  because  of  all  revolutions  at- 
tempted by  unreasoning  sentimentality,  and  rallied 
under  phrases  that  inflame  the  imagination,  but  fall 
to  pieces  when  searched  for  coherent  meanings  or  prac- 
tical policies. 

245.  Hige-pressure  Regarding  the  attempt  to  give  govern- 
progress.  ment  more  to  do,  the  socialist  says  that 

the  old  ship  of  state  under  the  orthodox  sixty  pounds 
of  steam,  is  carrying  us  forward  too  slowly — that  it  is 
but  mathematics  that  if  we  square  the  pressure,  we 
will  double  the  speed.  Give  her  3,600  pounds,  and  we 
shall  go  forty  miles  an  hour  where  we  now  go  twenty. 
The  sober  student  says  that  long  before  we  get  up  to 
3,600  pounds,  the  whole  thing  will  be  blown  to  flinders. 
And  while  the  socialist  is  dancing  around  and  calling 
for  his  3,600  pounds  of  steam,  the  inventor  and  educator 
and  sane  philanthropist  are  evolving  a  quadruple-ex- 
pansion engine  to  take  us  the  forty  miles.     But  the  old 


242  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§245 

ship  of  state  is  not  built  for  speed:  she  is  a  burden- 
carrier,  loaded  down  with  the  faults  and  imperfections 
of  the  average  man. 

246.  Socialism,  Apparently,  the  only  way  of  making  the 

wiien  possible,  will  socialist  scheme  work,  is  making  voters  so 
be  needless.  intelligent  that  they  will  elect    only  the 

best  men,  and  making  the  best  men  so  unselfish  that 
they  will  work  for  others  as  well  as  they  work  for  them- 
selves. On  that  basis,  as  it  has  taken  some  ten  thou- 
sand years  of  recorded  history  to  get  us  up  to  the 
present  Senate  of  the  United  States,  possibly  ten 
thousand  more  might  give  us  a  governing  body  that 
could  work  socialism,  but  when  people  are  able  to 
work  socialism,  they  will  be  able  to  take  care  of  them- 
selves without  it. 

Human  affairs  are  so  involved  with  each 
civiiizat'ion*^'' °^  other  that  Spencer  very  justly  compares 
them  to  a  web.  You  cannot  lift  a  single 
strand  without  power  enough  to  lift  the  adjoining 
strands ;  and  you  cannot  lift  a  strand  very  far,  without 
power  enough  to  lift  the  whole  with  that  strand. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

PERSONAL    PROPERTY    (CONTINUED). 

Schemes  for  Disinbtiting  it  more  Evenly  {Continued). 

(Ill)   Trade-tmion  Coercion. 

In  times  of  peace,  the  forefront  of  politics  is  apt 
to  be  occupied  by  schemes  of  magic  betterment.  So- 
ciaHsm  and  the  schemes  springing  from  trade-unionism 
are  now  competing  for  that  position.  It  is  not  prac- 
ticable to  give  the  former  any  farther  treatment  here. 
Regarding  the  latter,  of  all  the  impracticable  schemes 
for  equalizing  the  distribution  of  production,  the  one 
which  is  now  probably  deluding  more  people  than  all 
others,  is  Labor-Union  Coercion  to  raise  wages  higher 
than  the  demand  for  goods  and  services  will  pay. 

As  justice  can  be  reached  only  through 
sulfni/'of labor!  ^^^^  natural  flow  of  supply  and  demand,  to 
obstruct  either  by  any  sort  of  coercion, 
is  to  go  counter  to  natural  law,  and  going  counter  to 
natural  law  is  one  of  the  best  definitions  of  immorality. 
But  tho  this  principle  is  very  simple,  the  application 
of  it  is  often  far  from  simple :  every  event  is  the  result 
of  many  forces,  and  it  is  seldom  that  one  force  can 
be  justly  considered  without  reference  to  the  rest. 
There  is  nothing  more  in  accord  with  natural  law 
than  respect  for  life,  and  yet  often  respect  for  natural 
laws,  involves  disregarding  life.  For  instance:  regard 
for  one's  own  life  often  calls  for  disregard  for  the  life 
of  another.     So   circumstances   sometimes   arise  when 

243 


244  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  248 

morality  requires  a  disregard  of  the  natural  flow  of 
supply  and  demand.  But  those  circumstances  are 
probably  all  exceptional  and  abnormal.  At  the  time 
of  the  San  Francisco  earthquake,  the  equation  of  sup- 
ply and  demand  would  often  have  required  prices  for 
food  and  water  that  even  the  consciences  of  the  sellers 
would  not  permit.  In  that  case,  however,  and  in  most 
similar  cases,  the  short  supply  and  the  excessive  de- 
mand did  not  result  from  human  volition;  and  in  the 
case  of  taking  another's  life  to  defend  one's  own,  the 
conjuncture  does  not  result  from  the  volition  of  the  per- 
son taking  the  extreme  course.  Indeed,  it  is  probably 
safe  to  say  that  all  situations  which  justify  action  that 
is  ordinarily  reprehensible,  are  forced  upon  the  actor  by 
outside  conditions — usually  by  the  reprehensible  con- 
duct of  another.  On  this  principle  it  is  probably  true 
that  action  counter  to  the  natural  flow  of 
lnfy:Vseif-dJfen'cl.  supply  and  demand  is  sometimes  justifiable, 
but  only  when  some  natural  catastrophe 
has  already  interfered,  or  when  some  unwarrantable  act 
of  man  has  made  the  case  one  of  self-defence. 

Ordinarily  justice  can  float  in  only  on 
s^u^fp'lvPrtfor!"'^  fl^^'i  competition,  and  until  both  sides  pro- 
mote fluid  competition  instead  of  obstruct- 
ing it,  justice  will  be  impeded.  Some  employers  try 
artificially  to  increase  the  supply  of  labor  by  making  a 
given  amount  of  money  pay  so  large  a  number  of  men  that 
they  cannot  have  needed  food  and  comfort,  and  by  get- 
ting men  to  work  so  many  hours  that  they  cannot  have 
needed  rest  and  recreation.  Trade-unions  came  into 
being  to  artificially  limit  the  supply  of  labor,  as  a  defence 
against  such  employers.  But  having  found  that  some- 
times wages  can  be  increased,  hours  shortened,  and  condi- 
tions improved  by  strikes,  the  unionists  have  jumped  to 
the  false  conclusion  that  they  generalh^  can,  and  have 
gone  on  striking  in  season  and  out  of  season,  until  lately 
they  have  lost  more  from  idleness  during  strikes  than 
they  have  gained  between  them.  They  have  at  the 
same  time  made  serious  inroads  on  the  capital  of  the 
employers  from  which  their  wages  come,  and  on    the 


§  250  b]  Personal  Property.  245 

capital  of    the  community  which  calls  for  their  work. 

They  have  also  reasoned  that,  as  a  strike,  to  be 
efficient,  must  be  close,  it  is  justifiable  to  bring  out- 
siders into  the  union  by  any  means  whatever. 

The  idea  regarding  wages  is  a  fallacy,  and  that 
regarding  coercion  of  non-unionists  is  a  mistaken  and 
immoral  assumption. 

y.  As  wages  are  represented  in  cost  of  prod- 

sarily  ifmfted  ^"^^^  uct,  they  Cannot  go  higher  than  the  commu- 
(a).  by  demand      nity  is  willing  to  pay.     Neither  can  they  be 

for  product,  -^        .     ,,  °.        ^  .  ■'        ,.       ....  ■       ,, 

materially  raised  by  diminishing  capital  s 
share  of  product:  for  the  capital  in  any  trade  made 
unprofitable  by  excessive  wages,  would  first  seek  a 
more  profitable  investment;  failing  that,  a  more  prof- 
itable country;  and  failing  that,  would  tend  to  be 
consumed,  as  not  worth  saving.  In  any  one  of  the 
cases,  wages  cannot  stay  at  a  point  where  they  drive 
capital  out.  So  with  Ability,  if  wages  get  too  high 
to  leave  Ability's  profits  in  proportion  to  its  degree, 
it  will  forsake  the  industry,  and  the  laborers  will  be 
"out  of  work". 

250  (b),  by  com-  The  attempt  to  raise  wages  above  the 
petition.  normal  can  only  succeed,  even  for  a  time, 

for  but  a  part  of  the  men,  and  must  leave  some  unem- 
ployed. As  Professor  Laughlin  well  said  in  an  ad- 
dress before  the  Citizens'  Industrial  Association  of 
America : 

"It  means  always  and  inevitably,  the  existence  of  non-union 
men,  against  whom  the  unions  must  constantly  wage  war. 
Under  this  system,  high  wages  for  some  within  a  union  can 
be  maintained  only  by  the  sacrifice  of  others  without  the  union. 
In  short,  the  union  scale  of  wages  can  be  kept  only  by  driving 
all  other  competitors  from  the  field.  The  monopoly  is  only 
artificial,  not  real.  .  .  . 

"But  if  all  laborers  were  unionists,  the  situation  would  be  the 
same,  as  regards  supply,  as  if  there  were  no  unions.  .  .  .  Then 
the  rate  of  wages  for  all  in  any  one  occupation  can  never  be 
more  than  that  rate  which  will  warrant  the  employment  of 
all — that  is,  the  market  rate.  .  .  . 

"Obviously  the  union  rate  can  be  maintained  only  by  limiting 
the  stipply  of  labor  to  members  of  the  union  and  by  driving 
out  the  non-union  competitors.     Consequently,  the  inevitable 


246  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  250  6 

outcome  of  the  present  policy  of  many  labor  organizations,  is 
lawlessness,  and  an  array  of  power  against  the  State.  Having 
only  an  artificial  monopoly  of  labor,  their  ptirposes  can  be 
successfully  carried  out  only  by  force  and  intimidation." 

250  (c).  by  inven-  Moreover,  high  wages  tempt  to  labor- 
*""'•  saving  invention.     This  is  well  illustrated 

by  the  discovery  of  the  New  York  bricklayers  in  the 
summer  of  1905,  that  the  substitution  of  concrete  for 
bricks  was  taking  away  their  means  of  livelihood. 
These  bricklayers  had  one  of  the  strongest  of  unions, 
and  had  driven  their  nominal  wages  up  to  four  or  five 
dollars  a  day.  Their  real  wages  for  a  year  or  two  had 
not  been  much  over  half  their  nominal  ones:  for  the 
nominal  ones  had  been  obtained  through  the  notorious 
building  strikes  with  their  accompanying  idleness.  In 
the  spring  of  1905,  after  the  city's  long  deprivation  of 
builders,  the  demand  for  them  was  ravenous,  and 
the  bricklayers  expected  a  season  of  unprecedented 
prosperity.  But  paying  high  wages  had  set  builders 
to  experimenting,  and  to  discovering  that  a  dollar-and- 
a-half  laborer  with  a  sitpply  of  cement  and  small  stone, 
could  mix  and  pour  into  moulds  more  wall  in  a  day 
than  a  five-dollar  laborer  could  lay  with  bricks. 

Invention,  then,  puts  a  limit  to  possible  wages,  as 
effectually  as  does  the  choking  of  demand  that  high 
wages  must  cause,  or  the  competition  of  labor  attracted 
from  trades  where  wages  are  lower.  The  disregard  of  these 
unescapable  facts  by  the  unions  has  cost  them  dearly. 

Yet  the  unionists  may  acknowledge  the  force  of  what 
has  been  said,  and  still  doubt  if  they  have  at  the  time 
reached  the  possible  limit  of  wages.  They  are  doubly 
ready  to  doubt  it  when  they  consider  the  wealth  in  other 
hands;  and  as  they  are  not  inclined  to  the  slow  and 
arduous  ways  that  placed  it  there,  and  do  not  often 
possess  the  ability  to  take  those  ways,  they  are  naturally 
prone  to  the  strike.  But  of  late  they  have  so  often 
exercised  it  only  to  demonstrate  its  fallacy — to  reach 
through  times  of  privation  a  scale  of  wages  so  high  that 
the  public  will  not  pay  it — that  they  must  be  getting 
some  inkling  that  the  method  is  fallacious. 


§  252]  Personal  Property.  247 

The  other  assumption  of  the  unions — 

lion's  for'lVercionr"  ^^^^^  ^"^^  method — picket, boycott,  violence, 
murder,  is  justifiable  to  keep  the  union 
close,  hardly  requires  discussion.  The  few  who  sup- 
port it  on  any  basis  of  professed  reasoning,  assume  that, 
as  the  state  holds  the  property  and  even  the  life  of  the 
citizen  subject  to  sacrifice  for  the  greatest  good  of  the 
greatest  number,  the  trade  has  the  same  moral  right 
over  each  of  its  members.  The  alleged  justification — 
offered  in  various  forms — for  these  attempted  infringe- 
ments on  liberty,  is  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest 
number,  but  at  best  that  can  only  mean  of  "the  greatest 
number"  in  the  trade  in  question;  and  their  good  is 
avowedly  sought  through  price?  enhanced  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  greatest  number  of  the  community  (258  a). 
Here  should  be  most  carefully  and  thoroughly  realized, 
what  was  briefly  touched  upon  before:  first,  that  the 
principle  of  "the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number" 
can  be  applied  only  to  actually  "the  greatest  number  " — 
the  whole  community — which  the  greatest  number  of  a 
minor  section  can  never  be;  and,  second,  that  the  ascer- 
tainment and  securing  of  what  is  the  greatest  good  of 
the  greatest  number,  tho  it  has  taxed  all  the  wisdom 
of  all  the  ages,  has  even  yet  been  only  approximately 
attained;  and  that  so  far  as  it  has  been  attained,  it  is 
expressed  in  the  existing  body  of  laws  made  by  all  for  all. 

252.  Aimed  against  So  much  for  the  principles  involved.  Now 
alicf^publicf  °^^'^'  to  come  to  details.  Trade-union  coercion 
is  threefold :  It  is  directed  primarily  against  the  enter- 
priser, through  strikes  and  boycotts;  but  secondarily 
against  the  laborer,  to  prevent  his  giving  the  benefit  of 
competition  to  the  enterpriser,  or  incidentally  to  himself 
when  he  happens  to  be  unemployed:  the  union  wants 
nobody  competing  with  it,  and  therefore  tries  coercion 
to  get  all  men  to  belong  to  it,  and  to  stand  idle  when 
it  is  "idle.  And  third,  the  coercion  is  directed  against 
the  public — to  compel  public  opinion  to  endorse  labor's 
contentions,  by  stopping  transit,  coal  supplies,  food 
supplies,  and  other  necessities  and  conveniences. 


248  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§253 

253.  Coercing  the  ^s  to  coercing  the  employer :  the  time 
employer.  during  which  the  laborer  can  stand  idle 
without  a  loss  that  is  serious  or  fatal,  is  much  shorter 
xhan  the  time  during  which  the  enterpriser  can — the 
laborer  cannot  afford  to  wait  for  a  good  bargain,  while 
the  enterpriser  can.  The  union  therefore  tries  to  in- 
crease the  laborer's  ability  to  wait,  and  to  diminish  the 
employer's  ability  to  wait.  This  is  often  done  by 
making  the  settlement  of  a  difference  depend  not  on 
the  employer  doing  without  the  laborer  with  whom  he 
differs,  but  doing  without  any  laborers  at  all. 

Now  there  can  be  no  objection  to  any  peaceable 
efforts  necessary  to  secure  to  labor  the  full  benefit 
of  the  natural  demand  for  labor.  They  become  ob- 
jectionable only  when  they  deprive  the  employer  of 
the  full  benefit  of  the  natural  supply.  If  a  laborer 
thinks  that  demand  for  labor  justifies  higher  wages, 
it  is  perfectly  legitimate  to  test  the  question  by  leaving 
the  work,  and,  seeing  if  the  place  can  be  filled  at  the 
„,,.,.,    „  „        price.     But  when  the  test   is   attempted 

254.  The  Strike.       i,         n    .1       _  ,  •  1    4.         ^-u  -^ 

by  all  the  men  stoppmg  work  together,  it 
is  not  made  by  the  natural  flow  of  supply  and  demand; 
the  natural  flow  would  be  for  each  man  to  take  work 
elsewhere,  when  tempted  by  a  natural  demand  in  the 
shape  of  higher  wages  elsewhere.  This  would  not  in- 
volve stoppage  of  the  business :  the  question  could  thtis 
be  tested  without  shock  or  material  loss  on  either  side. 
But  there  are  obstacles  to  this  ideal  test,  obstacles 
often  so  great  as  a  change  of  the  laborer's  residence. 
These  obstacles  would  prevent  his  getting  higher  wages 
elsewhere,  unless  the  wages  were  enough  higher  to 
justify  the  expense  and  inconvenience  of  whatever 
change  might  be  involved.  This  expense  and  incon- 
venience may  readily  be  greater  than  would  be  involved 
in  a  strike,  and  the  laborer's  rights  might  be  better 
conserved  by  waiting  until  enough  men  were  discon- 
tented to  unite  in  a  strike.  But  not  only  is  the  strike 
against  whatever  rights  the  employer  may  have  to  get 
the  question  of  higher  wages  settled  gradually  without 
stopping  his  works,  but  strikes  are  in  many  instances, 


§  255]  Personal  Property.  249 

perhaps  in  most,  forced  by  a  minority,  or  undertaken 
by  men  who  are  not  discontented,  but  who  only  act 
in  sympathy  with  a  strike  elsewhere. 

Conversely,  the  employer  cannot  be  expected  to  carry 
on  work  at  prices  that  are  not  profitable,  and  an  entire 
stoppage  of  the  works  may  be  as  much  to  his  interest 
sometimes,  as  at  other  times  a  strike  may  be  to  the 
interest  of  the  men.  But  ordinarily  it  would  be  in  the 
course  of  nature  for  him  to  try  to  reach  a  lower  scale 
of  wages  gradually,  rather  than  proceed  to  a  lockout, 
and  both  incur  idleness  himself,  and  deprive  his  men 
of  their  means  of  subsistence. 

Thus  in  both  directions,  the  rights  of  master  and 
man  often  conflict.  Men  with  reason  and  morals  can 
generally  settle  their  conflicts  by  discussion  and  com- 
promise, but  beasts  can  settle  them  only  by  war;  war, 
however,  is  justifiable  only  as  a  last  resort,  and  strikes 
and  lockouts  are  war. 

Lockouts,  however,  play  but  a  small  part  in  indus- 
trial troubles.  The  U.  S.  Bulletin  of  Labor  for  Sep- 
tember, 1904,  shows  that  from  1881  to  1900  inclusive, 
there  were  over  twenty  times  as  many  strikes  as  lock- 
outs, and  the  employers  lost  over  five  times  as  much 
by  strikes  as  by  lockouts.  In  the  five  years  1 896-1 900, 
the  strikes  increased  to  over  thirty  to  one  lockout; 
and  the  ratio  of  loss  increased  three  and  a  half  fold; 
tho  if  the  years  189 5-1 899  were  taken,  it  would  show 
a  fall  in  strikes  to  about  fifteen  to  one  lockout.  In 
view  of  the  facts,  then,  we  may  reasonably  continue  to 
confine  our  consideration  to  strikes. 

In  all  the  coercion,  the  justice  of  the  case  has  been 
obscured  by  many  things — most  perhaps  by  what  seem 
to  be  the  plain  facts  that  a  man  has  a  right  to  stop 
work  when  he  pleases,  and  to  buy  or  not  buy  where 
he  pleases;  and  that  what  one  man  has  a  right  to  do, 
any  number  have  a  right  to  do  together. 
255.  Conspiring  to  But  in  all  Strikes  and  boycotts  there  is 
stop  work,  more  than  the  exercise  of  the  mere  right 

to  stop  work  or  stop  buying.  What  leads  to  all  the 
outrages  is   conspiring  to   stop   work   or   stop   buying. 


250  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§255 

Even  granting  to  the  individual  the  fullest  right  to 
do  either,  there  still  remains  serious  question  of  his 
right  to  enter  into  conspiracy  with  other  men  to  do  it 
together,  when  they  unduly  prejudice  the  rights  of 
others — when,  for  instance,  not  to  speak  again  of  private 
wrongs,  they  bring  an  industry — especially  a  public 
utility,  to  a  sudden  and  disastrous  standstill. 

Moreover,  even  leaving  out  the  many  cases  when  the 
men  are  ordered  out  against  the  real  wish  of  the  majority, 
or  because  some  other  men  have  struck,  and  considering 
only  the  cases  where  men  strike,  because  they  really 
want  to,  does  each  man  stop  work  when  he  pleases,  or 
do  the  discontented  stay  at  work  after  they  have 
become  discontented,  in  order  that  all  may  quit  work 
together,  to  the  greater  inconvenience  of  the  employer? 
Such  a  course  is  admittedly  a  conspiracy  to  injure  the 
employer,  and  the  right  to  take  it  is  seriously  questioned, 
even  by  the  law.  Similarly,  of  course,  with  the  boycott 
coercion. 

256,  Other  coer-  Beginning  with  occasional  and  often 
cions.  entirely    justifiable    demands    for    higher 

wages  and  shorter  hours,  the  unions  have  gradually 
added  limitation  of  apprentices;  limitation  of  a  ca- 
pable man's  output  co  that  of  an  incapable  man;  re- 
fusal to  handle  material  from  previous  non-union  pro- 
ducers, or  material  coming  from  other  shops,  or  mate- 
rial not  prepared  in  their  own  city,  before  they  have 
duplicated  it  and  destroyed  the  duplicate;  and  hosts 
of  other  regulations  of  their  employers'  business.  The 
employers  have  yielded  point  by  point  until  the  de- 
mands have  reached  the  logical  conclusion  of  that 
for  the  "closed  shop" — closed  to  all  but  union  men, 
and  that  the  foreman  shall  be  a  union  man  chosen 
by  the  men,  instead  of  by  the  man  who  pays  his  wages. 

In  1906  the  Typothetae  of  New  York  thus  stated  a 
situation  that  is  by  no  means  restricted  to  their  trade: 

"The  employer  cannot  put  his  own  son  to  work  at  the 
machinery  in  his  own  composing-room  until  that  son,  after  four 
years'  probation,  swears  allegiance  to  the  union,  subscribing  to 
an  oath  that  puts  obedience  to  the  union  above  his  duty  to 


§  257]  Personal  Property.  251 

family,  church  or  state.  The  employer  cannot  hire  or  dis- 
charge his  own  men;  they  must  be  hired  or  discharged  by  a 
foreman,  who  must  himself  be  a  member  of  the  union.  An 
employer  cannot  operate  the  keyboard  of  a  machine  that  he 
has  paid  for,  or  set  his  own  type;  he  is  not  allowed  any  repre- 
sentation in  his  own  composing-room.  The  composing-room 
is  controlled  by  a  union  foreman,  assisted  by  a  union  chair- 
man elected  by  union  men,  the  chairman's  duty  being  to 
see  that  neither  the  men  nor  the  foreman  shall  for  one  moment 
forget  any  of  the  numerous  restrictions  wliich  the  union  has 
placed  on  the  running  of  the  shop." 

-  In  the  last  analysis,  the  object  of  the  unions  has  been 
to  break  down  the  laws  protecting  private  property — 
factories,  stores,  mines,  transportation  agencies,  in 
order  that  they,  instead  of  its  owners,  may  control 
it  and  derive  from  it  what  revenue  they  please.  This, 
it  need  hardly  be  pointed  out,  is  one  of  the  forms  of 
confiscation  grouped  under  the  general  term  Socialism, 
Even  if  they  were  to  succeed  in  their  contention,  noth- 
ing can  be  more  certain  than  that,  if  the  property 
were  without  the  guidance  of  the  superior  minds  which 
created  it,  the  returns  from  it  would  fall  off,  and  the 
revenues  to  the  workman  would  diminish,  and  in 
many  cases— in  all,  if  the  principle  were  carried  out 
to  its  logical  conclusion — would  cease  altogether. 

At  this  point,  the  employers  have  decided  to  resume 
control  of  their  own  businesses,  and  to  run  the  "open 
shop" — shops  open  to  whom  they  please  to  engage,  on 
terms  satisfactory  to  their  own  side  as  well  as  the 
other — and  the  parties  are  in  the  midst  of  a  disastrous 
conflict.  There  can  be  but  one  end  to  such  a  conflict. 
Some  weak  employers  in  the  printing  trade  have  yielded 
for  the  moment,  because  they  could  not  afford  to  stop 
work;  but  the  strong  ones  are  holding  out  simply 
because  they  must.  The  question  is  simply  whether 
they  shall  control  their  businesses  or  give  them  up. 
The  laborers  cannot  afford  to  have  them  given  up. 

Most  of  the  discussion  of  strikes  in  the 
statistics  of '"^  later  literature  of  the  subject,  of  course 
^*''''^®^'  ends  with  the  census  of  1900.     Based  on 

the  facts  up  to  that  time,  Professor  Adams  says: 


252  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§257 

"In  the  Final  Report  of  tlie  Industrial  Commission  (page  864) 
it  is  pointed  out  that  although  on  the  average  of  the  twenty- 
years  1881-1900,  about  330,000  persons  were  thrown  out  of 
employment  annually  by  strikes  and  lockouts,  this  number 
constituted  only  about  3.36  per  cent,  of  the  persons  employed  in 
industries  affected  by  strikes.  The  actual  time  lost  by  strikers 
in  this  period  amounted  to  about  194,000,000  days.  However, 
'spread  over  the  whole  period,  this  loss  amounts  to  very  much 
less  than  one  day  per  year  for  each  adult  worker.  In  other 
words,  the  workmen  of  the  United  States  have  lost  less  time 
from  strikes  and  lockouts  than  from  the  celebration  of  the 
Fourth  of  July  or  any  other  legal  holiday.  .  .  .'  Similarly,  on 
the  basis  of  the  figures  of  the  Departrhent  of  Labor,  Mr.  Mitchell 
calculates  that  the  immediate  loss  traceable  to  strikes  amounts 
to  only  about  3  cents  per  month  for  each  inhabitant." 

Now  the  madness  that  ruled  the  unionist  world  from 
1 900,  the  last  year  considered  in  the  foregoing  para- 
graph, to  1906,  when  these  words  are  written,  v/ould 
make  that  paragraph,*  if  applied  to  the  more  recent 

*  Professor  Adams  deduces  from  a  table  of  strikes  from  1 881  to 
1 900  some  conclusions  that  are  strange  to  find  in  a  book  usually 
as  reliable  as  his.  One  is  that  unionism  has  tended  to  lessen  the 
number  of  strikes.  In  support  of  this  he  deduces  the  fact  that 
in  '86-'90  there  were  4358  union  strikes,  while  in  '96  to  1900 
there  were  but  4175.  But  I  find  that  the  same  table  shows  that 
in  '8i-'9o  there  were  5669  strikes,  which  in  '91-1900  rose  to 
8,788,  and  even  that  his  five  years  '86-'9o,  containing  4,358 
union  strikes,  were  followed  by  five  years,  '9i-'95,  containing 
4,613. 

Moreover,  in  the  two  periods  he  selects,  he  compares  the 
non-union  strikes  with  the  union  strikes,  with  the  showing 
that  the  union  strikes  decreased  four  per  cent.,  while  the  non- 
union strikes  increased  ten  per  cent.  But  if  he  had  taken  the 
two  decades  that  I  have  taken  from  the  same  table,  these 
figures  would  have  been  that  union  strikes  had  increased  fifty- 
four  per  cent,  (instead  of  diminishing  two  percent.),  while  non- 
union ones  had  increased  but  thirty-five  per  cent.  Since  1900, 
the  statistics  are  not  available,  but  no  observer  can  doubt  that 
the  facts  have  been  even  vastly  more  in  the  direction  that 
my  comparison  of  the  two  decades  shows,  or  that  the  unions 
have  fomented  strikes  to  a  degree  that  seems  to  mean  nothing 
short  of  the  madness  of  those  whom  the  gods  wish  to  destroy. 

Of  course  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Professor  Adams 
deliberately  selected  fractions  of  each  decade  which  happened 
to  support  his  theory,  and  yet  a  glance  at  his  table  reveals  the 
showing  of  the  whole  twenty  years  to  be  startlingly  counter  to 
that  of  the  two  periods  he  has  selected. 


§  253]  Personal  Property.  253 

period,  the  wildest  nonsense — a  fact  which  it  is  impor- 
tant for  writers  to  point  out  as  long  as  current  facts 
and  previous  facts  continue  in  such  direct  contra- 
diction— probably  until  the  census  of  19 10  shows  the 
conditions  of  the  last  six  years,  and,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
the  subsidence  of  them.  Favorable  symptoms  of  the 
subsidence  are  the  rise  of  the  employers'  unions  and 
citizens'  industrial  unions,  a  great  decrease  of  strikes 
since  1903,  and  the  falling  off,  in  1904,  of  the  member- 
ship of  the  trade-unions,  which  is  not  yet  made  up, 
despite  the  subsequent  full  employment  and  high 
wages. 

258.  Coercing  the  ^s  to  coercing  the  laborer:  there  is  no 
'^'^o'"^'"'  question  that  the  trade-union  would   be 

more  efficient  as  a  monoply,  and  that  it  has  a  right  to 
persuade  men  to  make  it  a  monopoly.  But  equally  is 
there  no  question  that  it  has  no  right  to  add  violence 
or  intimidation  to  persuasion,  or  that  the  unions  have 
at  last  become  so  used  to  artificially  limiting  the  supply 
of  labor,  have  become  such  adepts  in  it,  and  have  de- 
rived such  advantages  from  it  (tho  largely  illusive  ones) , 
that  they  have  got  in  the  way  of  doing  it  under  un- 
justifiable circumstances,  and  by  unjustifiable  means. 

Among  the  means,  as  already  said,  is  the  use  of 
coercion  to  limit  the  number  of  apprentices.  Such  a 
policy,  even  among  shipwrecked  sailors  struggling  for 
a  raft  too  small  to  hold  them  all,  is  not  easily 
regarded  with  patience,  and  when  it  is  persistently  pur- 
sued by  men  already  supplied  with  the  necessities  of 
life  and  not  a  few  of  its  luxuries,  its  cruelty  and  selfish- 
ness are  beyond  excuse.  Its  absurdity  is  often  on  a 
par  with  them:  for  instance,  in  several  trade-unions — 
notably  in  the  typographical  ones,  it  has  now  got  to 
the  point  where  a  father  cannot  teach  his  trade  to 
his  son  in  his  own  shop,  without  the  consent  of  the 
union ;  and  it  need  hardly  be  pointed  out  that  if  limita- 
tions were  practiced  by  all  trades,  more  of  the  com- 
munity would  be  reduced  to  the  position  of  labor  too 
unskilled   to  be  organized — of  that  pitiable  residuum 


2  54  T^^^c  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  258 

"the  unemployed.",  which  is  drawn  upon  only  when 
nothing  better  can  be  had. 

On  the  other  hand,  some  trades,  as  in  the  printers' 
strike  of  1905-6,  have  forced  employers  to  teach  the 
trade  to  so  many  outsiders,  that  many  of  the  strikers 
themselves,  on  wanting  work  after  the  strike  has  failed, 
find  their  trade  overcrowded. 

Appreciating  the  value  of  unity  of  action,  whether 
the  cause  be  right  or  wrong,  the  unions  have  stopped 
at  no  crime  in  the  effort  to  secure  it.  Not  content 
with  the  savagery  of  pushing  apprentices  off  the  raft, 
the  unions  are  given  to  boycott,  violence  and  murder, 
to  coerce  men  to  stop  work  against  their  will;  and 
all  these  steps  are  habitual  in  quarrels  not  their  own; 
and  in  strikes  entered  upon  when  the  employers  have 
done  no  wrong.  The  Chicago  Tribune  claims  to  have 
statistics  showing  that  in  the  United  States  from  1894 
to  1904  inclusive,  there  were  three  times  as  manv 
murders  committed  in  riots  to  coerce  laborers,  as  in  all 
other  riots  put  together. 

The  unions  have  set  no  limits  to  the  ends  they  hope 
to  attain  by  coercion  of  laborers.  Reason  and  justice 
require  that,  other  things  even,  the  lowest  bidder  should 
258  (a).  The  obtain  work.  The  unions  wish  to  elimi- 
Labor  Trust.  j^^tc  all  bidding   among  laborers.       They 

have  made  the  euphemism  of  "collective  bargaining", 
and  claimed  a  mass  of  virtues  for  it — correctly  claimed, 
if  their  own  side  alone  is  to  be  considered.  But  no 
human  ingenuity  can  extract  from  the  phrase  or  the 
idea,  anything  but  an  absolutely  close  labor  "trust": 
that  is  precisely  what  all  trusts  are  made  for — collective 
bargaining — eliminating  individual  competition.  This 
is  not  saying,  however,  that  trusts — whether  labor 
trusts  or  capital  trusts,  necessarily  merit  condemnation; 
but  it  is  characteristic  of  the  low  intelligence  which 
must  accompany  low  productive  power,  to  exalt  the 
labor  trust  while  condemning  the  capital  trust. 

Each  labor  union  is  trying  to  form  a  trust  controlling 
its  branch  of  labor,  and  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor  is  a  trust  trying  to  include  them  all.     To  deny 


§  259]  Personal  Property.  255 

this  would  be  so  absurd  that  many  of  the  members 
frankly  confess  it;  and  while  other  trusts  have  the 
decency  at  least  to  profess  to  lower  ■prices ,  the  members 
of  the  labor  trusts  all  confess,  at  least  indirectly, 
that  their  object  is  to  advance  prices.  Few  if  any  of 
them  have  the  intelligence  to  realize  that  all  labor 
trusts  but  each  man's  own,  are  advancing  prices  against 
him,  and  that  even  his  own  advances  the  price  of  such 
of  its  commodities  as  he  uses.  As  so  often  said  alread}': 
they  do  not  think  as  far  as  their  outgo,  but  only  as 
far  as  their  income.  Their  ideal  "collective  bargain- 
ing" is  that  there  shall  be  but  one  bargainer  on  their 
side,  and  that  the  laborer  shall  be  taken  at  his  price 
or  not  at  all,  even  if  babes  go  without  milk,  and  the 
whole  community  without  meat  and  coal.  While  the 
unionists  cry  out  most  bitterly  because  the  capital 
trust  is  only  "one  bargainer",  while  they  are  the  most 
bitter  denouncers  of  the  capital  trusts'  destruction  of 
competition  in  things  which  unionists  realize  that  they 
themselves  use,  they  are  ready  to  override  everything 
to  destroy  competition  in  labor.  While  they  denounce 
the  Standard  Oil  Company  and  the  American  Steel 
Company  for  absorbing  outsiders  through  business  com- 
petition, they  themselves  habitually  try  to  absorb  out- 
siders by  the  bludgeon. 

In  trying  to  limit  the  right  to  work  and  to  contract — 
the  right  of  demand  to  seek  supply,  and  of  supply  to 
seek  demand,  in  a  free  country,  they  are  attempting  an 
impossibility — without  freedom  to  work,  freedom  to 
contract,  and  freedom  to  compete,  no  country  can  be 
free:  the  condition  of  the  workman  must  be  simply 
that  of  the  slave,  and  the  slave  of  the  worst  tyrant 
known — a  wrong-headed  majority. 

250  Q      .  As  to   Coercing  the   Public,   everybody 

the  "nubiic  knows  illustrations  enough,  but  some  will 

The  union  label.       j^^^^    ^^    ^    dearer  understanding  of   the 

rights  of  the  situation. 

A  scheme  of  the  labor  trust  has  been  to  coerce  the 
public  from  buying  any  goods  not  bearing  the  union 


256  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  259 

label.  It  has  tried  the  scheme  in  many  ways  calling 
for  the  same  charity  that  we  give  to  children  when 
they  do  things  whose  enormity  they  do  not  realize. 
One  is  the  ingenuous  step  of  demanding  legislation 
to  enforce  the  scheme, — a  step  which  no  capital  trust 
would  be  either  so  bold  or  so  innocent  as  to  attempt. 
Perhaps  it  was  a  step  more  ingenuous  still,  when  a 
labor  trust  began  interfering  with  education  by  noti- 
fying publishers  that  union  influence  would  be  used 
to  drive  out  of  the  Boston  schools  any  books  that  did 
not  bear  the  union  label.  The  tendency  of  such  a 
policy  is  of  course  to  lead  people  of  independent  spirit, 
wherever  possible,  to  avoid  using  goods  with  the  union 
label.  I  have  even  known  a  case  where  a  person 
who  responds  with  considerable  freedom  to  circulars 
asking  for  aid  for  deserving  charities,  has  ceased  pay- 
ing attention  to  those  which  bear  the  union  label.  To 
an  obvious  criticism,  he  responded  that,  whatever 
those  bearing  the  union  label  might  deserve,  there 
were  enough  not  bearing  it,  to  justify  concentrating 
on  them  all  the  money  he  could  give. 

And  yet  with  all  the  claims  for  the  union  label,  the 
highest  New  York  court  in  1906  would  not  sanction  a 
requirement  of  it  in  the  contract  for  the  public  printing 
of  Onondaga  County,  pronounced  the  requirement 
"against  public  policy  and  unlawful",  and  said  that 
"the  Board  with  just  as  much  propriety,  so  far  as  its 
legal  right  is  concerned,  might  have  permitted  only 
Baptist  or  Unitarian  printers  to  enter  the  bidding  list". 
The  decision  is  very  full  in  citation  of  supporting  cases. 

The  following  paragraphs  from  the  New  York  Time's 
of  May  12,  1906,  may  cast  some  farther  light  on  the 
alleged  right  to  coerce  the  public  into  endorsing  a 
labor  contention,  by  stopping  work: 

"When  the  strike  of  the  Funeral-Drivers'  Union 
iP^tration""  2°^  under  way  yesterday,  New  York  witnessed 

such  scenes  as  the  city  never  before  saw. 
' '  Several  funerals  were  abandoned  by  strikers  when  the  dead 
were  between  the  church  and  the  grave. 


§  2  6o]  Personal  Property.  257 

"  Of  103  funerals  that  had  been  set  for  yesterday  in  the  city 
only  23  were  finished.  The  carriages  of  some  of  those  were 
stoned  by  the  strikers  or  their  sympathizers. 

"  Farrell's  funeral  was  set  for  one  o'clock.  Several  carriages 
and  a  hearse  had  been  drawn  up  to  the  door,  when  a  walking  dele- 
gate from  the  union  ordered  the  drivers  to  go  back  to  the  livery 
stable.  They  went  back.  Th.n  came  the  news  that  the  livery- 
stable  owner  had  ten  other  funerals,  and  had  been  obliged 
to  sign  the  agreement.  The  carriages  returned  to  the  house  of 
mourning,  but  came  back  with  flying  colors.  On  the  heads  of 
the  hearse-horses  were  two  red,  white  and  blue  flags,  and  on 
the  bridles  of  each  of  the  carriage-horses  tiny  flags  signified  a 
victory  for  the  funeral-drivers.  The  mourners  protested,  de- 
claring that  the  funeral  procession  with  the  flags  would  look 
like  a  west-side  chowder  club.  But  with  the  union's  flags 
flying  at  the  heads  of  the  hearse-  and  coach-horses  the  funeral 
went  on  to  the  cemetery." 

In  another  case  "The  Rev.  Father  John  C.  Henry  .  .  .  was 
delivering  a  eulogy  on  the  dead  man  when  there  was  a  com- 
motion at  the  church  door.  ...  A  committee  from  the  striking 
union  had  called  the  driver  of  the  hearse  and  ordered  him  to  take 
his  hearse  back.  .  .  .  The  coach-drivers  were  ordered  back,  too. 
Leaving  the  body  and  the  mourners  in  the  church,  the  hearse- 
driver  and  the  coach-drivers  drove  away.  The  sexton  .  .  .  went 
about  notifying  the  mourners  of  the  situation  and  telling  them 
to  remain  in  their  pews  until  matters  could  be  straightened 
out.  .  .  .The  police  reserves  from  two  precincts  were  sent  to 
see  that  the  strikers  did  not  again  interfere  with  the  funeral. 
Then  Undertaker  Hagan  hitched  one  of  Undertaker  Slevin's 
horses  to  an  undertaker's  wagon,  and  returning  placed  the 
body  in  the  wagon.  The  immediate  relatives  of  the  dead 
man  accepted  the  offer  of  a  private  carriage  that  had  taken  a 
party  to  the  funeral,  and  then  followed  the  body  to  Calvary 
Cemetery.  The  rest  of  the  mourners  went  to  the  cemetery 
in  trolley  cars,  after  this  funeral  had  been  held  up  for  two 
hours. 

"In  another  case,  up  in  the  Bronx,  the  body  was  put  in  a 
milk-wagon  and  driven  to  the  cemetery,  while  the  mourners 
rode  in  surreys  and  grocery  wagons." 

In  another  case  'A  large  number  of  the  striking  funeral 
drivers  assembled  opposite  the  Ogle  home  at  8  o'clock.  The 
police  reserves  were  sent  for,  and  drove  the  strikers  away. 
.  .  .  Four  men  appeared  carrying  the  coffin  on  their  shoulders 
and  followed  by  the  mourners,  who  walked. 

' '  Dr.  Guilfoyle  granted  an  extension  of  the  burial  permit  in 
the  Weaver  case,  so  that  the  body  could  be  held  at  the  house 
until  to-day.  The  law  forbids  the  holding  of  a  body  more 
than  four  days.  .  .  .  The  Weaver  family,  like  others  in  mourning 
for  their  dead,  were  compelled  to  sit  up  another  night  with 
their  dead  relative. 


258  TJie  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  260 

"The  funeral  of  Antonio  Le  Grabier  .  .  .  was  headed  off  by 
a  committee  of  strikers,  who  ordered  the  hearse-driver  and 
the  coach-drivers  to  leave  their  seats.  They  pulled  up,  leaving 
the  coaches  and  hearse  in  the  roadway.  ..." 

In  another  case  ' '  Striking  drivers  ran  out  and  tried  to  drag 
Undertaker  Lumoro  from  his  seat  on  the  hearse.  Policeman 
Gleason,  one  of  the  guards,  ran  at  the  strikers  with  his  club  and 
drove  them  away.  The  funeral  then  proceeded,  .  .  .  but  still 
followed  by  the  mob  of-  striking  funeral  drivers  and  their 
friends. 

"At  the  ferry  the  mob  threw  sticks  and  stones  at  the  hearse 
and  coaches.  The  mourners  climbed  out  of  the  carriages  and 
took  refuge  in  the  ferry -house. 

■'A  man  asked  Dr.  Guilfoyle  to  hold  the  body  of  his  child  for 
another  day.  He  said  the  child  had  died  of  measles,  and  that 
the  undertaker  told  him  the  body  would  have  to  be  taken  to 
the  cemetery  in  an  express  -wagon. 

"  'My  wife  is  very  ill',  he  said,  'and  she  vows  she  will  not 
permit  anyone  to  place  our  child  in  an  express  wagon.  If  I 
can  get  a  permit  to  hold  the  body  for  twenty-four  hours  more, 
it  will  be  the  means  of  probably  saving  the  life  of  my  sick  wife.' 

"Dr.  Guilfoyle  granted  the  permit. 

"It  was  said  at  the  Health  Department  that  if  an  attempt 
is  made  to-day  to  hold  up  funerals  the  police  will  be  called  on 
to  make  arrests  under  Sections  314  and  315  of  the  Penal  Code. 
Section  314  provides  that  any  person  who  detains  a  dead  human 
body  on  any  demand  is  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor.  Section  315 
says : 

"  'A  person  who,  with  or  without  authority  of  law,  obstructs 
or  detains  any  person  engaged  in  carrying  or  accompanj-ing 
the  dead  body  of  a  human  being  to  a  place  of  burial  is  guilty 
of  a  misdemeanor.'  .  .  . 

"Dr.  Guilfoyle  said  the  strikers  yesterday  had  held  ^up  the 
funeral  of  a  person  who  died  from  diphtheria.  This  was  a 
serious  matter,  he  said,  as  the  body  had  been  held  over  the 
twenty-four-hour  limit  without  the  Health  Department's  per- 
mission." 

The  right  to  stop  work!     Has  anybody 

261.  The  right  to     ^  riorht  to  any  tiling  which  will  lead  to  such 

stop  work.  ,        -^      .    .  -^   ,       *  ,  .  , 

barbarities  as  these,  or  such  as  may  be  read 

of    in    connection     with    a    large     proportion    of    all 

strikes  ? 

Undoubtedly,  other  things  even,  any  man  has  a  right 

to  quit  work  when  he  pleases.     But  plainly  there  are 

cases  where  other  things  are  not  even.     I  cannot  treat 

this  important  subject  better  than  I  have  done  else- 


§  262]  Personal  Property.  259 

where,*  and  I  will  therefore  use  again  the  passages 
with  slight  modifications. 

In  any  contract  for  work,  even  if  terminable  without 
notice,  certain  things  which  it  is  superfluous  to  express 
in  the  contract,  are  always  understood.  One  of  those 
things  is  that  neither  party  shall  wilfully  use  the  relation 
between  the  two,  to  the  damage  of  the  other,  or  of  any- 
body else.  Nobody  would  say  that  a  workman  whose 
business  it  is  to  connect  water-  or  gas-pipes  has  a 
right  to  quit  work  the  moment  he  has  tapped  a  main, 
without  making  his  connection  or  stopping  the  leak; 
nobody  would  claim  that  a  surgeon  has  the  right  to 
stop  work  after  he  has  cut  a  man's  leg  off,  before  stop- 
ping the  blood  and  putting  the  stump  in  order;  nobody 
would  claim,  indeed,  that  an  actor,  having  gathered 
his  audience  together,  has  a  right  to  stop  in  the  middle 
of  the  play,  even  if  he  returns  half  the  entrance-money. 
.  .  .  No  fair-minded  person  can  fail  to  see  that  railway 
employees  have  no  right  to  quit  work  while  trains  of 
passengers,  animals,  or  perishable  freight  are  likely  to 
be  delayed ;  and  as  the  welfare  of  the  whole  community 
depends  not  only  upon  trains  being  carried  to  their 
destination,  but  upon  their  being  regularly  run  at  their 
usual  intervals,  it  also  follows  from  the  same  considera- 
tions, that  no  railway  employee  has  a  right  to  quit 
work  under  any  ordinary  circumstances  without  giving 
notice  reasonably  sufficient  for  the  procuring  of  a  sub- 
stitute if  one  can  be  had,  or  for  making  some  reasonable 
arrangement  if  one  cannot.  And  in  all  cases,  the 
laborer's  right  to  stop  work  is  limited  by  the  rights  of 
others  to  have  their  interests  put  in  safe  or  reasonably 
complete    condition    before    the    laborer    leaves    them. 

262,  The  com-  The  parties  to  this  question  are  no  longer 

munity's  defence,  merely  the  employer,  the  striker,  and  the 
possible  man  glad  to  take  his  job,  but  there  is  a  fourth 
man  who  is  of  vastly  more  importance  and  power  than 
any  of  them,  and  who,  as  soon  as  he  becomes  fully 

*  "  Sturmsee  ",  third  edition,  pp.  409-12. 


26o  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  262 

alive  to  his  rights,  is  going  to  settle  them  in  a  way 
that  will  brook  no  cavil  or  resistance.  This  fourth  man 
is  the  average  citizen — agglomerated  as  the  community 
at  large.  In  the  United  States,  he  represents  to-day 
over  forty  million  adults  (including  his  v/ife)  and  over 
eighty  million  people,  including  his  children,  whose 
milk  supply  (not  to  speak  of  the  family  food  and  fuel, 
and  his  convenience-  of  passing  between  house  and 
business)  has  been  held  up  a  little  too  often  by  the 
mere  convenience  or  whim  of  some  two  million  persons 
belonging  to  the  trade-unions.  ■  If  his  rights  had  been 
violated  because  of  the  necessities  of  these  people, 
or  of  crying  injustice  inflicted  upon  them,  he  would 
have  felt  sympathy  and  patience.  But  they  have  been 
too  often  held  up,  not  by  men  quitting  old  jobs  and 
seeking  new  ones,  as  discontent  and  opportunity  arose, 
but  by  conspiracies,  for  poor  reasons,  to  stop  work  and 
make  others  stop  work,  together. 

There  has  been  a  principle  upheld  among  Anglo- 
Saxon  people  for  a  good  many  hundred  years,  tho 
suffered  to  lapse  into  occasional  desuetude,  that  men 
conspiring  to  do  a  thing  unobjectionable  if  they  do 
it  separately,  but  working  harm  to  the  rights  of  an- 
other or  of  the  community  if  they  do  it  together,  are 
guilty  of  a  criminal  act;  and  the  community  is  rapidly 
being  forced  into  a  disposition  to  visit  on  such  crim- 
inal acts,  their  proper  penalties.  The  work  has  begun 
already. 

2g3  g   .  J  The    aggressions    at    last    have    forced 

organizing  combinations    not    only    among    the    em- 

in  self-defence,  pioyers,  but  among  ncw  forces  that  are 
irresistible — those  of  the  community  in  general.  Few 
labor  unions  can  see  beyond  their  own  ranks;  they 
forget  that  their  exactions  must  be  met  not  merely 
by  their  employers,  but  by  all  who  use  the  product, 
including  even  members  of  other  unions. 

In  1901  the  first  Employers'  Association  was  formed 
in  Dayton,  Ohio.  Before  that  time  employers  had 
quite  generally  sought  to  profit  by  each  other's  troubles, 
instead    of    uniting    against    all    unjustifiable    trouble. 


§  263]  Personal  Property.  261 

In  1901,  an  Employers'  Association  was  organized  in 
Chicago,  and  many  other  cities  soon  followed  suit. 

About  the  same  time  street-car  operatives  had  been 
making  serious  trouble  in  Montana,  and  miners  doing 
the  same  in  Colorado.  Remembering  the  Vigilance 
Committee  of  San  Francisco,  the  people  organized 
similarly,  many  workmen,  even,  being  on  the  side  of 
law  and  order.  Nearly  four  hundred  of  these  associa- 
tions have  grown  up  and  are  now  combined  in  the 
National  Citizens'  Industrial  Association  "for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  common  people",  which  publishes  a 
valuable  organ,  "The  Square  Deal".  It  includes  the 
National  Association  of  Manufacturers,  comprising  some 
three  thousand  firms  and  corporations,  whose  organ  is 
"American  Industries";  and  also  the  powerful  "Anti- 
Boycott  Association".  Thus  the  intelligence,  capital, 
and  rights  of  citizenship  of  the  country  are  at  last 
arrayed  against  the  excesses  of  the  unions,  and  by  or- 
ganized appeal  to  the  law,  have  obtained  important 
decisions  against  them ;  *  have  prevented  much  class 
legislation;    and  are  disseminating  valuable  education. 

The  National  Association  of  Manufacturers  has  estab- 
lished free  employment  bureaus  to  give  independent 
laborers     work    which     strikers    have    refused.f     The 

*  "  In  three  fourths  of  the  Chicago  strikes,  injunctions  have 
been  secured  restraining  strikers  from  interfering  with  non-union 
men,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  a  conspiracy  to  prevent  work. 
Hence  the  anti-injunction  bill  which  the  American  Federation 
of  Labor  has  tried  hard  to  put  through  Congress.  This  bill,  in 
the  opinion  of  Mr.  James  M.  Beck,  chief  counsel  of  the  American 
Anti-Boycott  Association,  'legalized  conspiracies'  between 
unions,  but  made  it  impossible  to  enjoin  them."  {From  an 
article  in  tJie  Chicago  '"World  of  To-Day"  by  Mr.  Isaac  F. 
Marcosson) 

t  "Nearly  every  strike  ending  in  a  victory  for  the  open  shop  has 
been  followed  by  the  establishment  of  a  labor  bureau.  The  union 
men  call  it  a  black-list  agency,  because  it  keeps  a  check  on  a  man's 
record.  The  National  Metal  Trades  Association  furnishes  a  good 
example.  It  runs  open  shops.  Any  man  of  good  character  want- 
ing a  job  in  the  metal  trades  can  apply  there  and  in  four  out  of  five 
cases  he  secures  work  free  of  charge.  The  secretary  investigates 
the  man's  record.  All  the  facts  about  him  are  put  on  a  card 
which  is  kept  in  a  permanent  card  catalogue.     In  this  way 


262  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  263 

employers'   organizations,  in  nine  tenths  of  the  cases 
which  they  have  taken  up,  have  estabhshed  the  open 
shop,  where  the  unions  have  tried  to  destroy  it. 
264,  Educational         Great  as  has  been  the  immediate  eco- 
'^^s"'*^"  nomic    value   of    all    this    experience,    its 

educational  value  must  be  greater  still.  Both  are  indi- 
cated in  the  simple  fact  stated  before,  that  while  in  1903 
there  were  in  Chicago  1,300  strikes,  in  1904  there  were 
but  800.  Unless  all  strikes  are  wise  and  justifiable,  it  is 
reasonable  to  presume  that  the  falling  off  in  1904  was 
in  the  class  of  those  that  would  not  have  been  so,  while 
the  number  that  did  take  place  is  apparently  large 
enough  to  include  virtually  all  that  could  have  been 
wise  and  justifiable;  and  more  workmen  are  apparently 
learning  not  to  strike  wantonly,  while  they  still  re- 
tain the  spirit  to  maintain  their  rights. 

Thus  the  unionists  may  have  lately  begun  to  learn, 
that  after  all  there  is  no  more  magic  in  coercion  than 
there  is  in  the  other  nostrums  for  getting  much  by 
the  man  who  produces  little;  and  they  are  learning 
it,  as  the  uselessness  of  the  other  nostrums  has  had 
to  be  learned,  at  frightful  cost  to  themselves  and  the 
communit}^ 

If  more  of  such  teaching  is  needed,  it  may  get  so 
far  that  the  twenty  million  men  who  are  not  in  the 
habit  of  striking,   may  outvote  the   two   million  who 

the  disturbers  are  kept  out  of  the  shops.  Last  year  the  Chicago 
labor  bureau  of  the  metal  trades  had  4,850  applicants  and 
3,000  men  got  jobs. 

"Bureaus  in  different  cities  kept  in  touch  with  one  another. 
If  a  man  applying  in  Kansas  City  lies  about  the  reason  why 
he  left  a  job  there,  he  is  sure  to  be  found  out  if  he  applies  in 
New  York.  If  a  strike  is  threatened,  for  instance  in  the  New 
York  metal  trades,  a  central  secretary  can  send  a  telegram  to 
every  labor-bureau  secretary,  asking  him  to  rush  men  to  New 
York.  In  twenty-four  hours  a  htmdred  boiler-makers  would 
be  on  their  way  from  Kansas  City,  St.  Louis,  Chicago,  Cincin- 
nati, Philadelphia  and  a  dozen  other  places. 

"These  bureaus  have  made  leaders  cautious  about  calling 
men  out.  Formerly  they  called  a  strike  and  then  considered 
the  grievance.  Now  they  consider  the  grievance  first."  {Mar- 
cosson,  op.  ctt.) 


§264  a]  Personal  Property.  263 

are.  All  strikes  have  been  declared  criminal  by  statute 
before  now.  Even  in  Australasia,  "the  Paradise  of 
Labor",  the  mere  attempt  to  foment  one  is  subject 
to  heavy  penalties  (291),  and  if  the  proportion  of  them 
which  unquestionably  are  criminal  even  under  our  law, 
should  again  increase  as  rapidly  as  they  were  increasing 
before  people  began  the  checks  just  described,  all 
strikes  may  be  declared  criminal  again,  and  strikers 
reduced  to  depend  only  on  verdicts  of  not  guilty  where 
the  strike  is  justifiable,  just  as  such  verdicts  are  found 
in  the  rare  cases  where  killing  a  human  being  is  justifiable. 
oG/i/  .  Tfc  „  Probably    the    workingman    would    be 

264  ra;.   The  com-        .  •  -r    -^i  t        j^i  i 

munitys  defence  the  gamer  it  they  were.  In  the  modern 
will  defend  the  world,  the  Undisturbed  laws  of  competition 
wor  man.  would  probably  take  better  care  of  him, 

than,  in  his  recent  mad  attempts  to  overcome  those 
laws,  and  in  his  subservience  to  his  walking  delegates 
and  Sam  Parkses,  he  has  succeeded  in  taking  of  himself. 
But  probably  he  will  not  drive  society  to  any  such  ex- 
treme. Other  agencies  are  opposing  his  errors,  and  he 
is  coming  to  recognize  them  and,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  to 
be  the  gainer  in  consequence. 

If  the  justifiability  of  such  strikes  as  those  of  the 
last  few  years  had  had  to  be  passed  upon  by  judges 
and  juries,  few  of  the  hurtful  strikes  would  have  been 
undertaken,  while  the  laborers  would  still  have  felt 
free  to  enter  upon  those  deserving  of  public  sympathy, 
and  therefore  likely  to  be  of  real  use.  If  all  unionists  ap- 
preciated as  well  as  those  of  Australasia  seem  to  (278a), 
the  advantages  sure  to  accrue  to  them  from  such  legal 
regulation  of  strikes  as  would  prevent  the  unjust  and 
foolish  ones — especially  those  incited  for  mere  leaders' 
graft,  the  unionists  would  be  the  first  to  agitate  for 
the  growing  improvem.ents  in  the  law. 

The  demagogues  and  corruptionists  in  the  unions 
oppose  arbitration  agreements  and  all  other  means  of 
avoiding  strikes.  On  the  other  hand,  nearly  all  the 
good  and  wise  leaders,  and  there  are  many  of  them, 
do  all  they  can  to  avoid  strikes,  as  suicidal.  Many 
honest  but  stupid  men  look  upon  the  union  as  nothing 


264  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§2640 

but  a  machine  to  strike  with,  while  the  fact  is  that 
some  of  the  most  successful  unions,  whose  men  actually 
receive  far  more  than  the  average  amount  of  wages, 
have  seldom  struck  at  all.  Considering  how  the  unions 
have  lost  wages  and  membership  during  the  recent 
saturnalia  of  strikes,  it  is  not  unthinkable  that  unless 
the  strikes  disappear,  the  unions  must.  If  they  stick 
to  their  legitimate  function — like  that  of  the  German 
army  for  the  last  thirty-five  years — of  powerful  pro- 
moters of  peace,  letting  all  who  would  impose  on  the 
workingman  know  that  they  have  not  to  deal  with 
individuals,  but  with  an  army,  not  much  imposition 
need  be  feared.  They  have  rushed  into  their  excesses 
because  they  had  only  individual  employers  and  unpre- 
pared communities  to  impose  upon.  Now  that  the 
emploj'ers  and  the  communities  have  begun  to  marshal 
their  forces,  the  unions  will  soon  find  unjust  aggression 
hopeless,  but  will  receive  all  the  more  sympathy  when 
their  complaints  are  just. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

PERSONAL    PROPERTY    (CONTINUED). 

Schemes  for  Distributing  it  more  Evenly  {Continued). 

(IV)  Labor  and  the  Law. 

I  will  now  attempt  to  give  some  idea  of  the  general 
attitude  of  the  law  regarding  labor  conspiracy  and 
coercion. 

Of  the  laws  enacted  by  legislatures  and 
aifd^"Civfc"LawI"^*  pronounced  by  judges  and  by  priests,  sucli 
as  work,  are  only  statements  of  natural 
laws;  and  anybody  trying  to  reform  society  by  some 
fanciful  scheme  counter  to  natural  law,  will  soon  find 
himself  in  opposition  to  some  law  of  the  state  rooted 
deep  in  human  experience.  The  trade-unions  are 
already  in  pronounced  opposition  to  the  laws  of  both 
Nature  and  the  State,  as  is  shown  not  only  by  individual 
violations  of  the  law,  but  in  the  general  attitude  of 
the  unions.  To  carry  out  their  systems,  they  have 
found  it  necessary  to  exact  from  their  members  a 
pledge  of  fealty  to  the  union  superior  to  their  fealty  to 
church  and  state,  to  prohibit  them  from  entering  the 
militia  which  protects  the  established  law,  and  to 
agitate  for  the  abrogation  of  injunction,  which  is  one 
of  the  most  important  features  of  the  established  law; 
they  have  procured  the  enactment  of  many  impossible 
statutes,  which  are  of  course  falling  to  pieces  under  the 
scrutiny  of  the  courts;  and  they  frequently  publicly 
admit  that  they  hold  themselves  superior  to  the  law, 

265 


2  66  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§265 

and  that  they  cannot  succeed  without  going  beyond  it. 
After  President  Roosevelt  told  the  unionists  at  Chicago 
in  1905  that  there  would  be  no  discrimination  in  favor 
of  either  side,  the  President  of  the  Chicago  Federation 
of  Labor  said:  "The  President  deals  a  death-blow  to 
organized  labor  .  .  without  discrimination,  we  are  just 
where  we  started.  What  we  have  been  fighting  for  is 
union  labor  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others."  In  other 
words,  they  had  been  fighting  to  override  the  laws  pro- 
tecting the  non-unionists'  Right-to-Work,  and  every 
man's  right  to  join  the  union  or  not  at  his  free  will. 
Their  avowed  and  acted  policy  is  that,  if  society  will 
not  see  their  most  trivial  demands  granted,  society 
shall  suffer  the  most  serious  "consequences.  In  short, 
just  as  the  ignorant,  seeking  for  shorter  cuts  to  fortune 
than  industry,  frugality,  inventiveness  and  the  other 
effective  sources  of  wealth,  have  lately  tried,  with  con- 
spicuous failure,  to  set  aside  the  natural  laws  which 
control  land,  money  and  industry,  so  they  are  now 
attacking  not  only  the  statute  laws  which  they  them- 
selves have  approved,  but  the  venerable  system  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  common  law  which  has  grown  out  of  the  experi- 
ence of  the  ages,  and  which  is  by  many,  and  those  proba- 
bly the  wisest,  regarded  as  the  greatest  achievement 
and  most  important  possession  of  the  human  race. 
Probably  existing  laws  are  adequate  to  the  situation,  at 
least  so  far  as  the  unions  have  not  effected  the  repeal 
of  the  common  law  which  has  protected  the  liberties 
of  English-speaking  people  since  English  was  first 
spoken.  Altho  the  common  law  has  always  been  re- 
garded mainly  as  the  defence  of  the  poor  against  the 
rich,  many  people  have  been  surprised  to  find  in  it  equal 
elements  of  defence  of  the  rich  against  the  poor.  An 
impression  has  become  widespread  that  vox  populi  is 
not  always  vox  dei,  and  that  the  voice  of  the  trade- 
unionist  is  not  always,  even  the  voice  of  the  people.* 

*  An  instance  instructive  in  many  ways,  not  least  regarding 
the  frequent  boomerang  effect  of  legislation,  is  afforded  in  this 
connection.  No  portion  of  the  community  was  more  active 
than  the  trades-unions  in  the  agitation  which  led  to  the  Sher- 


§  265  a]  Personal  Property.  267 

However,  conspiracies  of  laborers  to  obstruct  and  even 
to  destroy  the  business  of  employers  who  would  not,  and 
often  could  not,  concede  to  their  demands,  have  grown 
so  frequent  that,  like  the  violence  of  primitive  com- 
munities, they  have  come  to  be  regarded  as  justifiable; 
and  American  legislatures  have  even  passed  statutes 
admitting  a  right  to  strike.  But  the  courts  are  taking 
different  ground. 

265  (a).  The  Law  The  legality  of  a  number  of  men  doing 
of  Conspiracy.  together  what  each  may  do  separately,  was 
treated  by  Justice  Harlan,  in  the  U.  S.  Supreme  Court, 
Arthur  vs.  Oakes.     He  said: 

"An  intent  upon  the  part  of  a  single  person  to  injure  the 
rights  of  others  or  of  the  public  is  not  in  itself  a  wrong  of  which 
the  law  will  take  cognizance,  unless  some  injurious  act  be  done 
in  execution  of  the  unlawful  intent.  But  a  combination  of 
two  or  more  persons  with  such  an  intent  and  under  circum- 
stances that  give  them,  when  so  combined,  a  power  to  do  an 
injury  they  would  not  possess  as  individuals  acting  singly,  has 
always  been  recognized  as  in  itself  wrongful  and  illegal." 

Nearer  up  to  date,  in  1906,  the  Pennsylvania  court 
of  first  resort  (whose  judgment  was  confirmed  by  the 
higher  court)  in  the  Purvis  Boycott  case,  said: 

''The  defendants  contend,  however,  that  what  they  did  in 
concert  was  simply  what  each  might  have  done  for  himself, 
acting  on  his  own  initiative,  and  that  their  concerted  action 
was  not,  therefore,  unlawful. 

"  I  do  not  understand  such  to  be  the  law  of  our  state.     There 


man  Anti-Trust  Act.  This  act  makes  criminal  every  com- 
bination in  restraint  of  trade  between  the  states.  It  was 
primarily  aimed  against  abuses  among  the  railroad  companies 
and  the  great  shippers.  It  has  now  been  applied  by  the  courts 
to  boycotts  and  similar  combinations  interfering  with  the 
business  of  any  establishment  sending  goods  outside  of  its 
own  state,  and  the  mere  notification  of  their  criminality  peace- 
fully resolved  the  teamsters'  boycott  against  the  Kellogg 
Switchboard  Co.  in  Chicago,  the  freight-handlers'  boycott  against 
the  meat-packers,  and  other  boycotts  in  other  places.  The 
unions,  dissatisfied  with  the  laws  they  advocated  for  others, 
when  applied  to  themselves,  arc  now  agitating  for  repeal. 


268  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  265  a 

is,  tinder  some  circumstances,  a  potency  in  numbers  of  which 
the  law  takes  notice.  "  Men  often  do  [illegally]  by  the  combina- 
tion of  many,  what  severally  no  one  could  accomplish,  and 
even  what  when  done  by  one  would  be  innocent.  There  is  a 
potency  in  numbers  when  combined  which  the  law  cannot 
overlook  when  injury  is  the  consequence.  .  .  .' "  Morris  Run 
Coal  Company  vs.  Barclay,  68  Pa.  173. 

Then  was  quoted  a  previous  decision,  in  Patterson  vs. 
Building  Trades  Council,  11  Dist.  Rep.  500: 

"  'All  the  authorities  of  this  state  go  to  show  that  while  the 
act  of  an  individual  may  not  be  unlawful,  yet  the  same  act 
when  committed  by  a  combination  of  two  or  more,  may  be 
unlawftd,  and  therefore  actionable.'" 

The  court  went  on: 

"  The  authorities  above  cited  indicate  clearly  that  the  doctrine 
of  Bohn  Manufacturing  Co.  vs.  Hollis,  54  Minn.  223  and  40 
A.  S.  R.  319,  that  'What  one  man  may  lawfully  do  singly,  two 
or  more  may  lawfully  agree  to  do  jointly',  is  not  the  doctrine 
of  the  law  of  our  own  state.  Neither,  indeed,  does  it  seem  to 
conform  to  elementary  principles.  The  efforts  of  one,  by  rea- 
son of  their  very  puniness,  may  be  such  that  the  law  will  take 
no  notice  of  them:  'de  minimis  lex  non  curat.'  But  when,  with 
increasing  numbers,  the  individvial  eifort  has  grown  into  an 
avalanche  of  power,  can  it  still  be  said  that  the  law  will  not 
notice  it  because  the  individual  contributions  thereto  are 
small?  With  us  the  law  takes  notice  of  the  cumulative  power 
of  increasing  numbers." 

The  same  point  was  sustained  by  Judge  Knowlton  of 
Massachusetts  when  he  said : 

"An  act  which  can  be  done  in  legitimate  competition  by  one, 
two  or  three  persons,  each  proceeding  independently,  might 
take  an  entirely  different  character  both  in  its  nature  and  its 
purpose  if  done  by  hundreds  in  combination." 

Similar  ground  was  taken  regarding  the  whole  ap- 
parently innocent  class  of  rights  which  include  stopping 
work  at  will;  choosing  one's  shopmates;  buying  where 
one  pleases ;  peaceably  arguing  with  another  man  regard- 
ing choice  of  places  and  times  for  working,  buying  and 
selling;  etc.,  etc.,  when  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court  said: 


§  265  &]  Personal  Property.  269 

"  No  conduct  has  such  an  absolute  privilege  as  to  justify 
all  possible  schemes  of  which  it  may  be  a  part.  The  most  inno- 
cent and  constitutionally  protected  of  acts  or  omissions  may  be 
made  a  step  in  a  criminal  plot,  and  if  it  is  a  step  in  a  plot,  neither 
its  innocence  nor  the  Constitution  is  suthcient  to  prevent  the 
punishment  of  the  plot  by  law." 

The  general  principle  was  thus  illustrated  by  Hon. 
Daniel  Davenport,  Counsel  to  the  Anti-Boycott  League, 
in  an  address  before  the  Citizens'  Industrial  Association 
of  America,  in  1905: 

'  'Suppose  half  a  dozen  men  in  my  town  are  bakers;  I  go  to 
one  of  them.  .  .  .  He  may  say  to  me:  'You  do  not  belong  to 
my  church,  or  you  do  not  belong  to  any  church.  ...  I  do  not 
want  to  sell  you  any  bread  unless  you  join  the  church.'  He 
has  a  perfect  right  to  do  that.  And  so,  if  I  go  to  each  of  the 
other  five,  every  one  of  them  has  a  right  to  say  that  he  will 
refuse  to  sell  to  me ;  but  if  those  six  men  have  combined  together 
and  agreed  not  to  sell  me  bread,  in  order  to  make  me  do  some- 
thing, for  instance,  to  make  me  join  the  church,  that  is  a  con- 
spiracy, and  every  act  they  do  to  carry  out  that  conspiracy  is 
unlawful,  by  reason  of  the  fact  of  its  being  a  step  in  the  plot. 

'  'That  principle  has  been  laid  down  by  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  in  a  case  that  arose  in  the  State  of  Wisconsin. 
It  has  been  emphatically  laid  down  by  the  courts  of  Illinois,  and 
it  has,  within  a  few  days,  in  cases  that  we  have  been  connected 
with  in  the  State  of  Massachusetts,  been  recognized  and  applied." 

Other  decisions  to  the  same  general  effect  are  too 
numerous  and  too  various  tci  recount.  Occasionally 
some  demagogic  judge  who  cares  more  for  Labor  than 
for  Law,  or  some  petty  magistrate  who  does  not  know 
the  law,  turns  up  with  a  decision  in  the  opposite  di- 
rection, but  the  weight  of  the  law  is  now  past  question. 
The  bearing  of  these  decisions  on  the  right  to  strike 
is  obvious — that  men  have  no  right  to  attack  another 
man's  property  or  business  because  they  once  helped 
in  it,  and  threw  up  their  jobs  because  they  and 
their  employer  could  not  agree;  and  that  conspiracies 
to  strike,  picket  and  boycott  are  such  attacks. 
265  (b).  The  A  strike  is  questionable  also  on  the  second 

"Corner"  again,  ground  that  it  is  an  artificial  damming  up 
of  the  supply  of  labor:  so  it  is  open  to  the  same  objec- 
tion with  an  artificial  cornering  of  goods. 


270  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  2656 

For  these  considerations,  the  common  law — the  de- 
cisions of  judges  have  not  seldom  been  against  there 
being  any  such  thing  as  a  right  to  strike.  The  Eng- 
lish courts,  whose  example  has  largely  influenced 
ours,  have  held  from  time  immemorial  that  it  was 
criminal  conspiracy  for  workmen  to  unite  to  raise 
wages  and  shorten  hours,  and  Parliament  has  passed 
statutes  to  the  same  effect.  These  acts  were  repealed 
in  1824,  and  later  there  have  been  statutes  declaring 
that  no  combined  action  could  be  criminal  in  a  trade 
dispute  unless  it  were  criminal  when  committed  by  an 
individual.  But  there  is  a  growing  sense  that  this  is 
going  too  far.  As  already  shown,  there  are  many  de- 
cisions of  courts,  English  as  well  as  American,  that  acts 
which  can  work  no  injustice  when  performed  by  an 
individual,  may  work  great  injustice  when  performed 
by  many  men  at  once. 

265  (c).  Malicious  A  long-cstablished  principle  is  that 
intent.  strikes    are    criminal    if   undertaken   with 

malicious  intent.  The  range  of  malicious  intent,  how- 
ever, is  not  yet  very  thoroughly  defined.  It  seems  to 
have  been  sufficiently  determined  whether  there  is  an 
element  of  malicious  intent  in  holding  up  the  transit 
of  food  or  fuel  of  the  whole  community  in  order  to 
secure  some  relatively  minor  convenience  or  concession 
for  a  few. 

26b  (d).  Labor-  In    Massachusetts,    strikes    are    illegal 

saving  machinery,  when  directed  against  labor-saving  ma- 
chinery. In  1895  the  Supreme  Court  issued  an  in- 
junction against  the  masons  building  the  Harvard 
Medical  School,  stopping  work  because  the  contractors 
were  using  labor-saving  machinery  to  form  the  arches. 
Labor-saving  machinery  is  so  clearly  demanded  by  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number,  or  "public  policy  ", 
that  it  is  strange  that  this  act  of  the  judges  should  be 
regarded  as  something  of  a  novelty. 

265  (e).  The  open  Strikes  are  illegal  when  directed  against 
^'"'P-  the  open  shop.     In  the  Chicago  Typothetae 

Case,  in  1905,  the  injunction  prohibited  "from  attempt- 
ing to  prevent  by  threats  of  injury  or  by  threats  of 


§265/^]  Personal  Property.  271 

calling  strikes,  any  persons  from  accepting  work  from 
or  doing  work  for  such  complainants."  And  there  are 
hosts  of  decisions  to  the  same  effect. 
265//;.  "immedi-  Many  of  the  judges  who  admit  the  right 
tlVsympathetic''  ^o  Strike,  limit  it  by  an  important  pro- 
«*'''■''«■  vision — that  legally  to  conspire  to  strike,  a 

man  must  have  an  "immediate  interest"  in  the  object 
struck  for.  It  is  widely  held  that  a  man  has  enough 
immediate  interest  in  increased  wages  or  decreased 
hours  to  justify  his  conspiring  to  strike  for  them,  but 
it  is  also  widely  held  that  in  a  strike  to  compel  the  dis- 
charge of  a  non-union  man,  or  the  reinstatement  of  a 
union  man,  the  strikers  have  no  such  "  immediate  in- 
terest" as  to  prevent  the  strike  being  an  illegal  con- 
spiracy. For  the  same  reasons,  sympathetic  strikes  are 
now  quite  generally  held  to  be  illegal  conspiracies,  a 
man  having  no  such  "interest"  in  another  establish- 
ment or  another  trade  working  beside  him — on  a  build- 
ing for  instance,  not  to  speak  of  a  trade  in  another 
part  of  the  country,  as  to  justify  his  striking  because 
the  others  have  struck. 

265  (g)-  Prof.  The  following  additional  causes  enumer- 

Adams' summary,  ^ted  by  Profcssor  Adams  render  strikers 
liable  to  criminal  indictment: 

"Hindrance  and  delay  of  the  United  States  mail,  persuasion 
of  others  to  obstruct  the  mails  or  interstate  commerce  generally, 
inducement  or  coercion  of  one  person  to  boycott  another,  the 
coercion  of  the  public  generally  to  adopt  certain  measures,  and 
probably  the  violation  of  labor  contracts.  It  need  hardly  be 
said  that  in  most  of  these  cases  the  combiners  hope  to  benefit 
themselves  ultimately.  But  if,  in  the  chain  of  intermediate 
means,  there  is  an  illegal  act  such  as  intimidation  of  a  'scab',  or 
if  the  ultimate  benefit  is  remote,  trivial  or  indefinite,  while 
the  injury  is  the  immediate  object  sought,  the  combination 
becomes  illegal." 

265  <h).  Conflict-  A  recent  injunction  against  a  strike 
ing  laws.  q^  ^l^g  Wabasli  road  was  dissolved  because 

it  did  not  appear  that  the  intending  strikers  contem- 
plated an  "illegal  act".  If  tying  up  a  railroad  is  not 
yet  an  illegal  act,  the  tendency  of  the  law  shows  that 


272  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  265  li 

people  are  becoming  awake  to  their  rights  at  a  rate 
that  will  soon  make  it  one. 

Yet  despite  these  decisions  of  the  courts,  Pennsyl- 
vania has  a  statute  justifying  any  strike  whatever  that 
union  rules  may  sanction  Consequently  nothing  that  a 
trade-union  sanctions  can  be  an  "illegal  act"!  But 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  state  takes  a  different  view. 
On  March  19,  1906,  in  the  Purvis  case  before  referred 
to,  it  said: 

' '  In  attempting  to  justify  their  conduct  the  appellants  allege 
authority  for  it  in  the  act  of  June  16,  1891,  P.  L.  300.  While 
that  act  provides  that  they  may  devise  and  adopt  ways  and 
means  to  make  rules,  regulations,  by-laws,  and  resolutions  of 
their  order  effective,  it  sanctions  no  rules,  regulations,  by-laws 
or  resolutions  to  commit  wrong,  and  if  it  attempted  to  do  so 
by  authorizing  the  appellants  to  interfere  with  the  absolute  rights 
of  the  appellees,  the  legislation  would  be  a  dead  letter,  for  the 
legislature  cannot  abolish  the  Declaration  of  Rights." 

And  on  the  other  hand,  Illinois  has  a  statute  as  fol- 
lows : 

'  'Sec.  158.  If  any  two  or  more  persons  shall  combine  for  the 
purpose  of  depriving  the  owner  or  possessor  of  property  of  its 
lawful  use  and  management  or  of  preventing  by  threats,  sug- 
gestions of  danger  or  any  unlawful  means,  any  person  from 
being  employed  by  or  obtaining  employment  from  any  such 
owner  or  possessor  of  property,  on  such  terms  as  the  parties 
concerned  may  agree  upon,  such  person  so  offending  shall  be 
fined  not  exceeding  S500,  or  confined  in  the  county  jail  not  ex- 
ceeding six  months. 

''Sec.  159.  If  any  person  shall,  by  threat,  intimidation  or 
unlawful  interference,  seek  to  prevent  any  other  person  from 
working  or  obtaining  work  at  any  lawful  business  on  any  terms 
he  may  see  fit,  such  person  so  offending  shall  be  fined  not 
exceeding  $200." 

But  either  way,  as  already  intimated,  legislative  acts 
are  apt  to  become  dead  letters,  because  they  are  much 
influenced  by  ignorant  clamor;  the  body  of  the  com- 
mon law  which  has  grown  up  from  the  decisions  of 
trained  judges,  has  a  tendency  to  put  the  right  of 
striking  with  the  right  of  revolution — counter  to  law, 
justifiable  only  in  the  absence  of  other  remedies  for 


§  266]  Personal  Property.  273 

unbearable  ill — a  right  to  be  handled,  not  recklessl}'-, 
as  is  the  present  fashion,  but  only  in  the  gravest  need, 
and  to  be  tested  only  by  results. 

265  (/;,  Duty  of  Under  this  view,  whether,  in  any  special 
district  attorneys,  case,  a  Strike  sliould  be  justified  as  a  revo- 
lution, should  depend  on  public  opinion,  as  represented 
by  a  jury.  There  need  be  no  fear  that  any  jury  will 
favor  capital  as  against  labor,  and  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  in  the  absence  of  conflicting  statutes,  when- 
ever it  shall  appear  that  any  public  utility  is  paralyzed 
by  a  conspiracy,  it  is  a  district  attorney's  duty,  however 
much  it  has  been  neglected,  to  investigate  the  con- 
spiracy, and  if  he  feels  warranted,  to  propose  the  indict- 
ment of  the  conspirators.  While,  as  already  said,  public 
opinion  could  be  depended  upon  for  all  reasonable 
leniency,  no  one  who  has  seen,  for  instance,  many  thou- 
sands of  the  popvilation  of  New  York  City  deprived  of 
their  usual  means  of  reaching  business  and  returning 
home,  by  the  conspiracy  of  a  much  smaller  number  of 
railroad  employees,  can  have  much  doubt  of  what  pub- 
lic opinion  in  such  a  case  will  eventually  be.  The  rights 
of  the  public  are  not  going  to  be  left  forever  under  the 
dictation  of  labor  leaders,  or  even  of  trade-union  con- 
ferences, and  there  cannot  be  many  ^^ears  before  public 
opinion  will  demand  statutes  perhaps  like  those  of  Aus- 
tralasia (278  a.  ff.),  to  protect  public  rights  against  them. 
So  much  for  the  general  attitude  of  the  law  regarding 
strikes. 

266.  The  work-  A.S  to  the  Specific  end  of  coercing  men 

man's  freedom.  i^to  unions,  the  attempt  to  make  all  men 
in  a  trade  join  the  union  was  declared  in  1905  by  Chief 
Justice  Knowlton  of  Massachusetts  to  be  against  pub- 
lic policv,  because  it  was  an  attempt  to  create  a  monopoly 
of  labor  in  that  branch.  Many  other  judges  have  held 
the  same. 

In  the  same  decision.  Judge  Knowlton  allowed  dam- 
ages against  a  trade-union  officer  for  forcing  an  em- 
ployer to  discharge  a  non-union  man. 

In  New  York  a  statute  prohibiting  an  emplo^^er  from 


2  74  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  266 

making  non-membership  of  a  union  a  condition  of  em- 
plo3'ment,  has  been  declared  unconstitutional.  But  on 
the  other  hand,  Professor  Seager  *  says; 

"The  Court  of  Appeals  of  New  York  State,  in  branding  as  a 
conspiracy  the  effort  of  a  union  to  secure  the  discharge  of  a 
non-union  man,  used  the  following  language:  'Public  policy 
and  the  interests  of  society  favor  the  utmost  freedom  in  the 
citizen  to  pursue  his  lawful  trade  or  calling,  and  if  the  purpose 
of  an  organization  or  combination  of  workingmen  be  to  hamper 
or  restrict  that  freedom,  and  through  contracts  or  arrangements 
■with  employers  to  coerce  other  workingmen  to  become  members 
of  the  organization  and  to  come  tmder  its  rules  and  conditions, 
under  the  penalty  of  loss  of  their  position  and  of  deprivation 
of  employment,  then  that  purpose  seems  clearly  unlawful  and 
militates  against  the  spirit  of  our  Government  and  the  nature 
of  its  institutions'!  But  a  few  years  later  f  the  same  court, 
looking  at  the  same  question  more  from  the  point  of  view  of 
labor  unions,  decided  that  a  strike  for  a  similar  purpose  was 
lawful,  on  the  ground  that  the  object  sought  was  not  the  injury 
of  the  non-union  employee,  but  the  preservation  of  the  union. 
So  long  as  there  seemed  to  be  no  malice  in  the  action,  and 
violence  and  intimidation  were  not  resorted  to,  it  was  held 
that  the  incidental  injury  to  the  non-unionist  could  not  render 
it  a  conspiracy. 

"This  reversal  of  opinion  illustrates  fairly  well  the  difficulties 
which  American  courts  encounter  in  their  efforts  to  apply  the 
common  law  of  conspiracy  to  labor  cases,  and 
267.  The  law  chaotic,  explains  why  they  arrive  at  such  diverse  con- 
clusions as  are  shown  by  the  authoritative  decisions  of  the 
cotirts  of  the  different  states.  It  v/ould  be  a  great  gain  if  the 
whole  question  of  the  nature  of  conspiracy  in  connection  with 
trade  disputes  could  be  settled  by  statute  in  the  United  States 
as  it  was  in  Great  Britain  by  the  Act  of  1875." 

Uniformity  could  not  be  hoped  for  in  state  legisla- 
tion.    But  perhaps  a  model  for  state  legislation  could 

*  This  chapter  is  largely  indebted  to  the  chapter  on  the 
Legal  Regulation  of  Labor  in  Professor  Seager's  "  Introduction 
to  Economics"  and  to  Professor  T.  S.  Adams's  chapter  on 
Labor  Laws  in  "Labor  Problems".  With  those  two  admi- 
rable and  up-to-date  works  in  hand,  it  would  be  worse  than 
superfluous  for  the  author  of  a  brief  summary  like  this,  to  ex- 
plore the  entire  ground  again.  For  a  fuller  treatment,  the 
reader  is  strongly  advised  to  consult  those  works. 

t  In  Curran  vs.  Gallen,  152  N.  Y.  33  (1897). 

X  In  National  Protective  Association  vs.  Cummings,  170 
N.  Y.  315  (1902). 


§  268]  Personal  Property.  275 

be  hoped  for  m  a  United  States  statute  regarding  a  con- 
spiracy to  interrupt  commerce  between  the  states. 

Truly,  the  law  has  as  yet  handled  labor  questions  only 
in  a  very  wobbly  way.  Professor  Seager  says  else- 
where : 

"There  is  scarcely  a  regulation,  from  a  simple  restriction  on 
the  age  at  which  children  may  be  employed  to  the  provision 
that  men  may  work  only  eight  hours  a  day  in  specified  industries, 
that  has  not  been  declared  unconstitutional  in  certain  sections 
of  the  countr3%  only  to  be  upheld  as  a  legitimate  exercise  of 
the  police  power  in  others." 

The  vacillation  and  uncertainty  of  the  law  have  been 
great  in  America,  not  only  because  of  the  fact  that 
each  of  forty-odd  states  has  its  own  set  of  laws,  but 
by  the  decisions  of  an  elective  judiciary  seeking  the 
labor  vote,  and  by  statutes  passed  at  Labor's  demand. 
Yet  the  natural  evolution  of  law  is  unquestionably  toward 
the  increased  protection  of  the  right  to  work  by  those 
who  want  to  work. 

Slow  as  the  law  has  been,  it  has  now  reached  a  secure 
and  consistent  position  against  the  picket  and  the 
boycott. 

268.  Picketing  ^s  to  picketing,  the  courts,  with  prac- 

unlawfui.  tical  unanimity,  are  taking  very  decided 

ground  that  it  is  an  unlawful  invasion  of  private  rights. 

The  early  injunctions  against  picketing  were  quite 
generally  on  the  ground  that  the  common  law  is  against 
enticing  away  a  servant  or  an  employee,  unless  possi- 
bly to  secure  an  advance  or  prevent  a  decline  of  wages. 
This  of  course  would  not  permit  picketing  in  a  sympa- 
thetic strike  or  a  closed-shop  one,  or  one  resulting  from 
a  discharge  of  hands.  But  later,  very  strong  general 
ground  has  been  taken  against  picketing  as  tending  to 
disturb  the  peace. 

Judge  McPherson,  sitting  in  the  United  States  Cir- 
cuit bench  for  the  Southern  District  of  Iowa,  on  the 
5th  of  July,  1905,  said:* 

*  From  an  address  of  Hon.  T.J.  Mahoney  before  the  Citizens' 
Industrial  Association  of  America,  Chicago,  November,  1905. 


276  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  268 

"  'There  is  and  can  be  no  such  thing  as  peaceful  picketing 
any  more  than  there  can  be  chaste  vulgarity,  or  peaceful  mob- 
bing, or  lawful  lynching. 

"  '  A  portion  of  this  language  was  adopted  and  amplified  in  an 
opinion  of  the  Appellate  Court  of  Illinois,  handed  down  on  the 
3d  of  October,  1905,  the  court  saying: 

"  '  "The  picket  system  once  established,  the  intimidation, 
assaults,  slugging  and  bloodshed  followed  as  naturally  and 
inevitably  as  night  follows  day.  There  can  be  no  such  thing  as 
peaceful,  'polite  and  gentlemanly'  picketing  any  more  than 
there  can  be  chaste,  'polite  and  gentlemanly'  vulgarity,  or 
peaceful  mobbing  or  lawful  lynching. 

"  '  "It  is  idle  to  talk  of  picketing  for  lawful  persuasive  pur- 
poses. Men  do  not  form  picket  lines  for  the  purpose  of  con- 
versation and  lawful  persuasion.  .  .  .  Its  use  is  a  form  of  unlawful 
coercion."  ' 

"  After  Judge  McPherson  had  filed  the  opinion  referred  to, 
the  managers  of  the  strike  abandoned  the  use  of  the  word 
'picketing'  and  adopted  that  of  'reporting',  the  pretense  being 
that  their  acts  could  possibly  be  justified  by  changing  the  name, 
but  the  character  of  the  work  done  by  the  'reporters '  was  iden- 
tical with  that  formerly  performed  by  the  'pickets'.  .  .  .The 
system  being  the  same  under  a  different  name,  deserved  and 
received  from  the  court  the  same  condemnation  that  had  previ- 
ously been  visited  upon  picketing." 

One  of  the  latest  decisions  comes  from  the  United 
States  District  Court  sitting  at  Milwaukee,  and  is  thus 
reported  in  the  New  York  Times: 

"Milwaukee,  June  17,"  [1906]. — "  In  a  sweeping  injunction 
United  States  Judge  J.  V.  Quarles  forbade  the  iron-molders' 
unions  and  sixty-one  individual  members  from  in  any  way  in- 
terfering with  the  business  of  the  Allis-Chalmers  Company. 

"The  strikers  are  enjoined  from  impeding,  hindering,  obstruct- 
ing or  interfering  with  any  of  the  business  of  the  company,  and 
from  entering  the  grounds  or  premises  of  the  complainant 
against  its  wish.  They  are  enjoined  from  compelling  or  attempt- 
ing to  compel  or  induce  by  use  of  threats  or  intimidation  of 
any  sort,  or  by  fraud  or  deception  or  violence,  any  person  to 
leave  the  employment  of  the  plaintiff  company,  and  also  from 
attempting  to  persuade  the  employes  of  the  company  to  break 
their  contracts  and  leave  the  employ  of  the  plaintiff. 

"Judge  Quarles  further  commands  the  striking  molders  to 
desist  from  congregating  at  or  near  the  premises  of  the  company 
with  the  purpose  to  intimidate  or  obstruct,  surround  or  impede 
any  of  the  employees  of  the  plaintiff.  The  order  further  pro- 
vides that  the  defendants  are  not   even  to  go  to  the  homes  of 


§  269]  Personal  Property.  277 

any  of  the  employees  for  the  purpose  of  persuading  them  into 
leaving  the  Allis-Chalmers  Company." 

Similarly,  an  injunction  in  the  Connecticut  Superior 
Court,  June  27,  1906,  restrains  the  union  from  "per- 
suading or  cajoHng"  the  complainant's  employees  to 
leave  work. 

In  the  TypothetcC  case  in  Chicago  in  1905,  the  court 
enjoined  picketing  not  only  at  the  factory, 

but  "  about  or  near  .'any  place  where  their  employees  are  lodged 
or  boarded,  for  the  purpose  of  compelling,  inducing  or  soliciting 
the  employees  of  any  of  said  complainants  to  leave  their  ser- 
vice; .  .  .  from  attempting  b}'  bribery,  payment  or  promise 
of  money,  offers  of  transportation  or  other  rewards,  to  induce 
the  employees  of  any  of  said  complainants  to  leave  their  ser\'ice." 

The  early  decisions  against  picketing  have  generally 
been  not  only  against  enticing  the  employee  away,  but 
also  on  the  ground  that  it  engenders  violence.  The 
later  ones  evidently  consider  the  fact  that  it  is  an 
unjustifiable  conspiracy  against  the  right  to  carry  on 
business. 

As  to  the  liability  of  unions  and  their 
bHity  for'darnages.  members,  for  damages  in  strikes  and  boy- 
cotts :  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  while  the  English  law  took  the  direction  of 
tolerance  toward  strikes,  it  took  a  counter-direction 
regarding  the  liability  of  trade-union  funds  for  dam- 
ages inflicted  in  consequence  of  union  action.  It  had 
been  held  that  as  the  unions  were  not  corporate 
bodies  they  were  beyond  the  reach  of  suits,  and  that 
their  members  could  only  be  reached  as  individuals. 
The  drift  of  opinion  counter  to  this  position  became 
decisive  in  i go i,  when  the  House  of  Lords  held  in  the 
celebrated  Taff-Vale  case  that  the  unions'  funds  were 
liable,  and  as  there  is  no  limited  liability  without  in- 
corporation (154  a),  this  decision  would  probably  make 
each  member  liable  for  the  total  amount  of  any  damages 
that  might  be  granted  against  a  union.  The  damages  in 
this  case  were  /.23,ooo.     The  English  unions  are  now 


278  The  Protection  of  Rights.  ,        [§  26^ 

trying  hard  to  have  the  effect  of  the  decision  annulled 
by  statute — one  of  the  typical  unionists'  attacks  on 
the  law. 

In  the  United  States  there  are  already  several  de- 
cisions in  the  same  direction:  for  example,  the  funds 
of  the  Waterbury,  Conn.,  unions  were  attached  for 
damages  resulting  from .  violence  in  the  street-railway 
strike  of  1903,  the  houses  of  the  Dailbury  boycotters 
are  under  attachment,  and  so  are  the  bank  accounts  of 
the  men  in  Rutland,  Vt.,  who  interfered  with  their 
employers  getting  help  in  1903. 

For  stopping  work,  by  master  or  man,  to  the  unrea- 
sonable detriment  of  others,  it  is  very  probable  that 
the  law  will  soon  clearly  see  the  reasonableness  of 
damages:  inasmuch  as  for  leading  others  to  stop  work, 
damages  have  already  been  granted. 

There  is  an  important  consideration  which  I  cannot 
express  better  than  I  have  already  done  in  an  earlier 
work,*  which  I  will  therefore  venture  to  quote  again: 

Damages  under  such  circumstances  could  generally 
be  collected  from  only  one  side — if  the  capitalist  is 
in  the  wrong,  the  laborer  has  an  easy  remedy;  if  the 
laborer  is  in  the  wrong,  the  capitalist  has  virtually 
none.  This  is  one  reason  why  employers  do  not  always 
contract  with  their  employees  for  a  reasonable  notice 
from  either  side  before  severing  their  relations.  And 
at  best,  the  law  is  a  slow  and  imperfect  remedy,  tho 
the  best  we  have.  Not  the  least  of  the  advantages  that 
would  come  to  society  from  an  increased  proportion  of 
property-holders,  would  be  increased  faithfulness  to 
contracts,  from  fear  of  damages.  This  being  absent, 
Misde-  however,  in  order  to  put  the  two  sides  on  an 
meanor'as  a  equality  in  Contracting,  the  violation  of  a 

substitute.  labor-contract   might   be  made  a    misde- 

meanor subjett  to  imprisonment.  Such  a  law  would  guard 
the  poor  man  against  the  rich  man  more  effectively 
than  a  money  penalty,  which  the  rich  man  could  afford 
to  disregard;   and  it  would  guard  the  rich  man  against 

*  Op.  cit. 


§  270]  Personal  Property.  279 

the  poor  man,  by  the  only  penalty  which  could  be  en- 
forced. Such  a  law  would  have  the  merit  that  under 
it,  juries  could  be  depended  upon  to  treat  the  poor 
man  at  least  as  justly  as  the  rich.  This  point  deserves 
the  careful  consideration  of  all  who  feel  an  interest 
in  the  improvement  of  the  law. 

270.  Some  sum-  The  Alabama  statute  prescribes  as  un- 
maries  of  the  law.    lawful  the  following  acts : 

"A  conspiracy  between  two  or  more  persons  to  prevent  any 
person,  firm  or  corporation  from  carrying  on  any  lawful  busi- 
ness within  the  state,  or  for  the  purpose  of  interfering  with 
the  same. 

"  The  loitering  of  one  or  more  persons  about  a  place  of  busi- 
ness for  the  purpose  of  inducing  others  not  to  buy  from,  sell  to 
or  have  Vjusiness  dealings  with  a  person,  firm  or  corporation,  or 
to  picket  any  works  or  place  of  business  for  the  purpose  of 
interfering  with  its  business. 

"The  printing  or  circulation  of  'any  notice  of  boycott,  boy- 
cott cards,  stickers,  dodgers  or  unfair  lists,  publishing  or 
declaring  that  a  bojxott  or  ban  exists,  or  has  existed,  or  is 
contemplated',  or  publishing  the  name  of  any  public  official  or 
judicial  officer  upon  any  blacklist,  unfair  list  or  other  similar 
list  because  of  any  lawful  act  or  decision  of  such  official. 

"The  use  of  force,  threats  or  other  means  of  intimidation 
to  prevent  any  person  from  engaging  in  any  lawful  occupation. 

"  For  any  person,  firm  or  corporation  to  maintain  a  blacklist 
or  to  notify  any  other  firm  or  corporation  of  the  names  thereon 
to  prevent  the  person  so  named  from  receiving  employment  "' 

Vice-Chancellor  Pitney  of  New  Jersey  summed  up 
the  law  in  1903: 

"  First — That  all  sorts  of  laborers  may  lawfully  combine  and 
form  unions  for  their  mutual  benefit,  and  that  they  may  use  all 
lawful  means  to  promote  their  own  interests,  being  careful  in 
so  doing  not  to  infringe  on  the  rights  of  others. 

"  Second — One  lawful  means  to  that  end  is  the  refusal  to 
work  on  terms  offered  by  the  employer. 

"  Third — An  unlawful  means  is  to  hinder  or  prevent  others 
from  working  for  an  employer  under  such  terms  as  they  shall 
see  fit. 

"  Fourth — One  means  of  such  hindering  and  preventing  is  in 
various  ways  to  render  it  either  difficult  or  uncomfortable  for 
such  willing  workmen  so  to  work.     This  is  an  unlawful  means. 

"  Fifth — -Another  unlawful  means  in  common  use  to  hinder 
or   prevent  willing   employees    from  working,   and  to   compel 


2  8o  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [  §  270 

employers  to  accede  to  terms  which  they  would  not  other- 
wise adopt,  is  the  boycott  in  its  various  forms." 

.  Injunctions    have    been  issued    against 

njunc  ion .  a^jnost  every  form  of  boycott  palpable 
enough  to  recognize,  and  damages  have  been  awarded 
in  several  cases. 

The  Anti-Boycott  law  in  Wisconsin  was  enforced 
in  so  comparatively  inoffensive  a  matter  as  two  news- 
papers refusing  to  print  advertisements  from  the 
patrons  of  a  third  which  had  raised  its  rates  higher 
than  theirs,  unless  at  the  same  rates.  As  bearing  on 
such  innocent  acts  as  stopping  buying  and  stopping 
working,  which  are  at  the  root  of  strikes  and  boycotts, 
Mr.  Mahoney  said  in  the  address  already  quoted  from, 
that  the  courts 

*  no  longer  hesitate  to  grant  injunctions  which  shall  not  only 
prevent  the  perpetration  of  assaults  and  the  destruction  of 
property,  but  shall  equally  protect  the  peace  of  mind  of  willing 
employees,  and  give  security  from  injuries  and  interference  with 
the  rights  of  employers  to  carry  on  their  business.  .  .  .  The 
courts  are  equally  in  accord  in  exercising  the  necessary  right 
to  punish  for  contempt  those  who  insist  upon  violating  the 
injunctive  orders.  There  was  a  time  in  the  not  very  remote 
past  when  much  outcry  was  raised  against  trials  for  contempt 
being  conducted  by  the  court  instead  of  by  a  jury,  but  .  .  .  the 
spectacle  was  all  too  frequent,  of  a  jury  acquitting  men  whose 
guilt  was  more  than  abundantly  established." 

But  this  does  not  warrant  agitation  for  doing  away 
with  injunctions,  but  only  for  doing  away  with  the 
judge's  power  to  punish  under  them  without  a  jury. 
A  bill  for  the  purpose  is  now  before  Congress.  That, 
however,  is  not  what  "Labor"  wants:  it  wants  its  own 
sweet  will  free  from  the  interference  of  either  judge  or 
jury. 

Yet  even  where  the  injunctions  have  not  held,  they 
have  been  of  value  in  giving  both  sides  time  to  stop 
and  think.  But  the  unions  have  got  so  much  in  the 
habit  of  forcing  their  own  way,  regardless  of  all  law, 
that,  altho  they  are  constantly  seeking  injunctions 
against  their  employers,  they  are  very  bitter  toward 


§271]  Personal  Property.  281 

injunctions  when  issued  against  themselves,  and  have 
sought  to  have  statutes  against  granting  an}^  injunctions 
at  all  in  labor  disputes.  This  has  a  show  of  fairness 
because  it  would  appear  to  apply  equally  to  both  sides. 
But  the  show  is  specious  (altho  it  seems  to  have  deceived 
the  President  of  the  United  States  while  the  proofs  of 
this  book  were  being  read) :  because  the  employers  are 
in  a  small  minority  and  hardly  ever  resort  to  violence. 
Granting  the  short-sighted  view  of  the  unions  that  any 
lasting  good  can  come  from  violence,  they  can  well 
afford  to  endure  the  little  violence  the  other  side  is  apt 
to  attempt,  if  they  can  have  free  swing  for  their  own 
habitual  lawlessness.  On  this  subject  of  injunctions  I 
again  resort  to  some  earlier  expressions.* 

There  is  one  form  of  anarchism  so  specious  that  it 
has  deceived  many  good  men.  It  proposes  to  do  away 
with  government,  by  doing  away  with  a  little  at  a  time; 
and  its  present  object  of  attack  is  what  it  is  pleased  to 
call  'government  by  injunction'.  Now  injunction  takes 
the  place,  in  government,  of  the  ounce  of  preventive. 
It  is  better  to  prevent  lawlessness  than  to  punish  it. 
Injunction  is  merely  the  exercise  by  a  judge,  of  the 
authority  to  prohibit  an  act,  not  necessarily  itself  pun- 
ishable at  law,  which  he  believes  likely  to  lead  to  acts 
which  are  punishable  at  law,  and  no  sane  man  can 
doubt  that  the  proper  exercise  of  this  authority  effects 
a  great  saving  of  public  peace  and  safety.  The  injunc- 
tion has  been  abused,  as  has  every  feature  of  the  law: 
judges  are  but  human,  but  no  sane  man  claims  that 
that  fact  should  do  away  with  the  law.  Those  who 
object  to  injunctions  are  (many  of  them  without  know- 
ing it)  in  precisely  the  same  condition  as  if  they  objected 
to  the  punishment  of  the  actions  which  injunctions  are 
issued  to  guard  against,  while  a  large  majority  of  those 
who  object  to  injunctions,  object  simply  because  injunc- 
tions prevent  their  having  their  own  way;  and  they 
object  on  the  same  grounds  on  which  they  object  to 
the  police  and  militia  as  well  as  to  the  courts — it  is 

*  Op.  cit. 


282  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§271 

simply  the  objection  to  all  authority — it  is  the  spirit  of 
anarchy. 

The  assumption  by  Labor  that  of  right  it  owns  every- 
thing, can  alone  account  for  some  of  its  claims.  The 
most  extreme  of  them,  perhaps,  is  illustrated  in  the 
bill  advocated  by  Mr.  Gompers,  the  president  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor,  which  would  prevent 
United  States  courts  from  issuing  injunctions  in  any 
contention  between  employers  and  their  men,  unless 
to  guard  some  property  or  right  against  damage  that 
could  not  be  made  good,  and  then  (here  is  the  extreme 
claim)  the  bill  goes  on  to  provide  that  "for  the  pur- 
poses of  this  act,  no  right  to  carry  on  business  of  any 
particular  kind  at  any  particular  place,  or  at  all,  shall 
be  considered  or  treated  as  property,  or  as  constituting 
a  property  right." 

This  of  course  is  an  almost  laughably  disguised 
scheme  to  obtain  from  legislation  a  right  to  destroy 
such  property  at  will,  through  the  picket  and  boycott, 
which  the  courts  have  abundantly  declared  counter 
to  American  liberty.  The  two  million  labor-unionists 
are  simply  claiming  absolute  control  over  the  rest  of  the 
American  people. 

At  the  meeting  of  the  National  Civic  Federation  in 
December,  igo6,  the  counsel  for  the  American  Federa- 
tion of  Labor  argued  that  the  laborer's  right  in  his 
labor  is  just  the  same  thing  as  an  employer's  "right 
to  carry  on  business  of  any  particular  kind  at  any 
particular  place,  or  at  all".  He  challenged  discussion 
of  the  point,  and  said  that  he  had  always  found  dis- 
cussion of  it  evaded.  The  claim  seems  to  me  very 
much  like  a  claim  that  because  a  man's  body  is  made 
up  of  cells,  a  cell  is  the  same  thing  as  a  man.  In  +his 
connection,  however,  the  fallacy  lies  in  the  fact  that 
no  laborer  ever  yet  sought  the  protection  of  a  court 
for  his  property  in  his  Right  to  Work,  unless  it  was 
for  protection  from  the  very  men  against  whom  the 
employer  too  seeks  protection  for  his  Right  to  Work — 
his  right  to  carry  on  his  business.  Therefore  the  very 
identity  in  the  two  properties,  be  it  real  or  fanciful, 


§272  a]  Personal  Property.  283 

which  the  Federation  of  Labor  claims,  is  an  argument 
in  favor  of  the  very  court  protection  of  both  which 
the  Federation  seeks  to  paral3^ze  in  the  case  of  the 
employer's  right — a  very  pretty  example,  it  seems  to 
me,  of  the  reasoning  on  which  all  labor  coercion  is 
based.  There  is  probably  no  more  remarkable  instance 
of  the  madness  which  can  be  produced  by  a  brief  period 
of  successfiil  aggression  before  the  aggrieved  have  time 
to  organize  for  defence.  The  counter-organization  has 
begun,  however,  and  the  madness  seems  to  have  reached 
the  pitch  where  it  indicates  the  intention  of  the  gods 
to  destroy.  But  if  this  could  mean  the  permanent 
destruction  of  labor  organizations,  it  would  be  deplorable. 
Yet  the  present  organizations  will  be  destroyed  if  they 
cannot  be  reformed.  There  will  be  better  ones  in 
either  event,  and  it  is  not  yet  proved  that  they  must  be 
new  ones. 

Leaving  now  the  law's  regulation  of 
?f  wage^s^"h^ou°rs  labor's  attempts  at  coercion,  let  us  devote 
and    conditions.      ^  ^.^^.j  ^^  j^g  general  attitude  regarding 

the  regulation  of  wages,  hours  and  conditions. 

Professor  Adams,  who  certainly  will  not  be  accused 
of  unfavorably  representing  Labor's  side,  says:  * 

272(a).  The  labor  "In  the  United  States  ...  the  history  of 
trust  again.  labor  leoislatioTi  is  one  long  tortuous  record  of 

special  protection  to  the  working  classes,  secured  by  subtle 
limitation  and  frank  disregard  of  the  doctrines  of  free  contract, 
and  bv  class  legislation.  .  .  .  Labor  organizations  are  specifically 
exempted  in  a  number  of  states  from  the  operation  of  the  anti- 
trust acts  (altho  such  exemption  has  been  held  to  annul  the 
whole  law) ;  and  in  their  practical  execution  the  anti-trust  laws 
have  been  directed  against  combinations  of  employers  in  re- 
straint of  trade  rather  than  against  the  combination  of  employees 
which  are  equally  in  restraint  of  trade." 

Of  Labor  laws  in  the  United  States,  Professor  Seagerf 
says : 

"  There  are  both  state  and  national  laws  that  directly  further 
the  monopolistic  ambitions  of  trade-unions.     The  state  of  Penn- 

*  Op.  cit.  t  Op.  cit. 


284  J  he  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  272  a 

sylvania  has  a  law  requiring  men  who  wish  to  become  master 
miners  to  work  as  helpers  for  a  certain  period  and  to  pass 
then  a  state  examination.  New  York  state  has  similar  laws 
in  reference  to  plumbers  and  horseshoers.  The  [alleged]  pur- 
pose of  such  statutes  is  of  course  to  insure  a  certain  degree 
of  proficiency  on  the  part  of  workmen  who  perform  these 
important  services,  but  that  they  assist  trade-unions  in  their 
efforts  to  control  the  supply  of  labor  in  their  trades  is  beyond 
question.  A  Federal  law  which  operates  in  the  same  direction 
is  that  prohibiting  the  entrance  into  the  country  of  workmen 
under  contract  of  employment.  It  might  appear  on  general 
principles  that  the  immigrant  whose  reputation  at  home  was 
such  that  he  could  secure  a  contract'  of  employment  from  an 
employer  in  this  country,  would  be  a  better  citizen  than  the 
immigrant  who  was  attracted  only  by  the  vague  hope  of  better- 
ing his  condition,  but  this  view  disregards  the  special  interest 
of  those  with  whom  the  newcoiner  would  compete  for  employ- 
ment. .  .  .  He  enters  the  country  as  a  non-unionist,  or  'scab'. 
.  .  .  The  law  which  prevents  such  resort  to  the  foreign  labor 
market  to  break  a  strike  .  .  .  serves  to  coniirm  a  close  union's 
monopoly  of  the  labor  supply,  at  the  expense  of  the  whole  com- 
munity." 

Of  course  such  utterly  irrational  laws  cannot  stand, 
and  never  would  have  been  passed  if  the  community  in 
general  were  as  well  organized  (as  it  is  rapidly  becoming) 
against  favoritism  in  legislation,  as  the  unions  are  or- 
ganized for  securing  it;  or  even  if  capital  were  not  so 
engrossed  in  securing  special  privileges  from  legislation, 
that  it  seldom  spares  attention  to  general  legislation 
affecting  its  general  rights,  but  is  content  to  rest  upon 
its  power  to  take  care  of  them  when  exigencies  arise. 

Professor  Seager  farther  says : 

272  (b).  Protecting  ' '  The  Supreme  Court  of  Colorado  declared 
the  laborer  unconstitutional  an  eight-hour  law  applying  to 

against  himself.  men  employed  in  the  mining  and  smelting 
industries  on  the  ground  that  if  such  a  law  was  calculated 
to  protect  the  health  or  morals  of  anybody,  it  could  only 
be  of  the  very  man  whose  work  was  restricted,  and  that 
the  legislature  had  no  right  to  restrict  freedom  of  contract  for 
the  benefit  only  of  the  persons  whose  liberty  was  thus  limited; 
and  yet  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  had  declared 
in  upholding  the  constitutionality  of  an  identical  statute  pre- 
viously passed  by  the  state  of  Utah,  that  the  legislature  had 
the  right  to  protect  an  individual  even  'against  himself,  on 
the  ground  that  '  the  state  still  retains  an  interest  in  his  welfare 


§  272  c]  Personal  Property.  285 

no  matter  how  reckless  he  may  be',  and  that  when  'the  individual 
health,  safety  and  welfare  are  sacrificed  or  neglected  the  state 
must  suffer ' .  " 

Following  out  the  idea  of  "protecting  the  laborer 
against  himself",  Professor  Seager  turns  to  another 
decision  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  which 

"  affirms  the  propriety  of  labor  laws  on  the  general  ground  that 
employers  and  employees  are  unequal  in  bargaining  power. 
'The  former  naturally  desire  to  obtain  as  much  labor  as  pos- 
sible from  their  employees,  while  the  latter  are  often  induced 
by  fear  of  discharge  to  conform  to  regulations  which  their 
judgment,  fairly  exercised,  would  pronounce  to  be  detrimental 
to  their  health  and  strength.  In  other  words,  the  proprietors 
lay  down  the  rules,  and  the  laborers  are  practically  constrained 
to  obey  them.  In  such  cases  self-interest  is  often  an  unsafe 
guide,  and  the  legislature  may  properly  interpose  its  authority.' 
Finally,  it  affirms  the  principle  already  quoted,  that  in  the 
exercise  of  its  police  power  the  legislature  has  the  right  to 
protect  a  man  even  against  himself." 

This  principle  may  be  regarded  as  established  law. 
New  York  goes  so  far  as  to  "protect  a  man  against 
himself"  by  punishing  attempts  at  suicide — which, 
paradoxically,  puts  a  premium  on  the  success  of  the 
very  act  it  prohibits.  There  is  a  point  at  which  this 
doctrine  would  involve  the  most  enervating  paternal- 
ism— a  point  at  which  the  individual  must  take  the 
consequences  of  his  own  acts.  On  this  point  Professor 
Seager  says : 

"  In  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  the  notion  that  the 
legislative  power  should  not  be  used  to  regulate  hours  and 
conditions  of  employment  has  been  abandoned  by  most  thought- 
ful persons,  but  the  prejudice  against  any  interference  with 
wages,  like  that  practiced  in  New  Zealand  and  other  Australian 
states,  remains  nearly  as  strong  as  ever.  There  is,  of  course, 
good  ground  for  this  distinction.  Hours  and  other  conditions 
272  (c).  Wages  of  employment  affect  directly  the  health  and 
uniihe  conditions,  vigor  of  the  working  classes,  wages  only  indi- 
rectly. Moreover,  workmen  are  less  mindful  of  their  own  inter- 
ests in  connection  with  hours  and  sanitary  arrangements  than 
in  connection  with  wages.  Making  all  allowance  for  these 
considerations,  many  thoughtful  persons  still  believe  that, 
under  certain  circumstances,  notably  those  found  in  connection 
with  the  sweating  system,  the  regulation  of  wages  must  also 


286  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  272  c 

t)e  undertaken  by  the  government  if  serious  evils  are  to  be 
corrected.  It  is  sometimes  argued  that  the  law  cannot  fix  the 
rate  of  wages,  but  this  is  contrary  both  to  reason  and  experience. 
The  law  cannot  fix  both  wages  and  the  number  of  persons  who 
shall  be  employed  at  those  wages,  but  it  can  declare  that  no 
one  shall  be  employed  in  given  trades  unless  paid  certain 
minimum  wages,  and  enforce  its  decree." 

272  (d).  The  living  And  here  follows  an  admirable  utterance 
'"^ae.  regarding    "the    minimum   wage",  which 

should  not  be  confused  with  that  favorite  topic  of  the 
sentimentaHsts  "the  living  wage''.  A  great  deal  has 
been  written  to  the  effect  that  it  is  an  employer's 
duty  to  give  an  employee  enough  to  live  upon  decently, 
whether  the  employee  earns  it  or  not.  But  this  sick- 
ening absurdity  should  not  prevent  the  reasoning  stu- 
dent from  giving  attention  to  the  following  considera- 
tions. 

"  The  result  may  be  an  addition  to  the  number  of  dependents 
who  are  'unemployable'  at  the  wages  fixed  because  too  ineffi- 
cient to  earn  them,  but  it  may  be  better  and  cheaper  for  society 
to  support  such  persons  in  almshouses  than  to  permit  their 
competition  to  hold  the  wages  of  great  sections  of  the  popula- 
tion down  to  a  starvation  level.  In  order  to  mark  off  the 
dependent  from  other  classes  the  state  may  find  it  necessary 
itself  to  fix  a  standard  by  which  the  ability  of  the  individual 
for  independent  self-support  may  be  determined.  Without 
desiring  to  advocate  the  establishment  by  law  of  standard  or 
minimum  rates  of  wages  for  the  sweating  trades,  the  author 
wishes  to  insist  that  this  policy  merits  the  same  unprejudiced 
consideration  as  is  now  accorded  by  intelligent  people  to  pro- 
posals for  restricting  the  employment  of  children  or  women,  or 
for  requiring  the  use  of  safety  appliances  in  connection  with 
dangerous  trades." 

272  (e).  Too  much  ^*    ^^    ^^^^    *0    *^^^    j^^^    ^O'^    ^^^    *^®    ^^^ 

cat-e  enervating       should  take  carc  of  a  pcrsou,  and  how  far 

and  against  liberty.  ^^   ^^^^^^^   ^^   ^^^^   ^^   ^^^^   ^^^^   ^j   himsclf. 

Certainly  in  countries  where  the  government  is  very 
paternal,  the  mass  of  the  people  are  apt  to  be  very 
childish.  And  yet  it  is  generally  agreed  that  the  law 
should  prevent  cruelty  to  children  and  even  to  animals — 
that  it  should  limit  the  hours  and  sanitary  conditions 
under  which  children  and  women,  and  sometimes  even 


§  272  ^]  Personal  Property.  287 

men  work;  and  as  already  illustrated,  many  claim  that 
it  should  even  protect  a  man  against  himself  if  he 
seeks  to  do  excessive  and  dangerous  things.  But  this 
can  be  carried  to  the  extent  of  infringing  upon  liberty. 
This  danger  in  protecting  him  from  other  dangers,  some- 
times leads  to  strange  results.  For  instance:  acci- 
dents from  ill-guarded  machinery  and  from  laborers 
working  when  too  exhausted  to  be  cautious,  annually 
destroy  more  than  twice  as  many  lives  in  the  state  of 
New  York  alone,  as  were  destroyed  on  our  side  in  the 
Spanish  war,  not  to  speak  of  the  larger  number  maimed 
and  crippled.  These  accidents  are  more  frequent  in 
the  last  weary  hour  of  work  than  during  the  rest  of 
the  day.  Yet  there  are  laws  requiring  machinery  to 
be  protected,  and  against  the  working  of  men — espe- 
cially on  railroads — longer  than  their  attention  can 
endure.  But  when  suits  for  damages  have  been  brought 
under  these  laws,  the  courts  have  sometimes  declared 
them  unconstitutional,  as  depriving  a  man  of  the  liberty 
to  work  when  and  where  he  pleases,  while  the  facts 
were  that  his  "liberty"  was  only  Hobson's  choice — 
working  as  ordered,  or  throwing  up  his  job.  It  seems 
as  if  such  statutes  ought  to  be  penal  as  against  the 
employer:  then  the  "liberty"  of  the  laborer  would  not 
be  reduced  to  the  miserable  alternative  of  running  the 
risk  which  the  employer  should  obviate,  or  temporarily 
abandoning  the  means  of  supporting  himself  and  his 
family. 

It  may  be  remarked  in  passing,  that,  on  the  other 
hand,  employers  are  frequently  subjected  to  injustice 
in  connection  with  accidents.  Juries  often  mulct  them 
for  injuries  to  employees  which  are  the  fault  not  of  the 
employers,  but  of  other  employees. 

Just  as  this  goes  to  press,  word  comes  of  an  interesting 
and  suggestive  decision  to  the  effect  that  in  a  "closed 
shop"  the  laborer  loses  his  right  of  action  against 
his  employer  for  damages  resulting  from  the  fault  of  a 
fellow  workman,  because  the  employer  has  not  been 
untrammeled  in  his  choice  of  workmen,  and  of  course 
as  the  workman  in  the  closed  shop  is  inevitably  a  mem- 


288  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  272  ^ 

ber  of  the  union  which  has  circumscribed  the  employer's 
choice,  he  shares  the  responsibiUty  for  the  shop  being 
closed,  and  cannot  "come  into  court  with  clean  hands", 
a  requisite  which  equity  demands. 

Statutes  protecting  the  community  from  diseases  bred 
in  tenements  and  sweat-shops  have  often  been  set  aside 
on  grounds  similar  to  those  stated  above — that  it  is  part 
of  a  man's  "liberty"  to  work  where  he  pleases.  It 
is  a  very  difficult  question  how  far  the  state  has  a  right 
to  interfere  with  the  liberty  of  the  individual — his 
liberty  as  a  child  to  stay  away'  from  school,  as  child 
or  man  to  break  down  his  health  by  overwork,  to  expose 
himself  to  dangerous  chemicals  and  machinery,  to  buy 
(or  sell)  dangerous  medicines  and  intoxicants,  and  to 
get  drunk  and  beat  his  wife. 

272  (f).  Extremes  Tliis  qucstion  has  arrayed  some  of  the 
and  the  medium,  "bggt  miuds  agaiust  cach  other.  At  the 
extremes  of  opposition  are  the  anarchist,  against  the 
state's  having  any  rights  at  all;  and  the  ultramontane 
who  would  have  the  state,  as  merged  with  the  church, 
regulate  the  minutest  functions  of  the  individual  con- 
science. Probably  the  safe  and  reasonable  limit  lies 
at  the  state's  right  of  self-defence.  The  whole  com- 
munity suffers  from  anybody's  ignorance,  ill  health, 
mutilation,  drunkenness,  brutality;  and  has  a  right 
to  guard  against  any  such  conditions  becoming  suffi- 
ciently widespread — directly,  or  by  way  of  influence 
on  popular  conscience  and  sensibilities,  as  to  cost  the 
state  more  than  it  would  cost  to  keep  the  evil  within 
bounds.  What  shall  be  done  against  any  particular 
self-inflicted  evil,  is  of  course  for  legislators  to  deter- 
mine, but  their  first  inquiry  should  be,  not  how  great 
an  evil  it  may  be  to  any  particular  man:  for  that  is 
his  own  business;  but  how  great  an  evil  is  it  apt  to 
be  to  men  in  general:   and  that  alone  is  their  business. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

PERSONAL    PROPERTY    (CONTINUED). 

Schemes  for  Distributing  it  more  Evenly  (Continued) . 

(V)  Remedies  on  Trial. 

.  ,     ,  .  There  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that 

war'and  industrial  all  the  decisions  alluded  to  in  the  preceding 
'^*'  chapter,  and  many  more,  are  steps  in  a 

process  by  which  industrial  war  is  to  be  replaced  by 
industrial  law,  just  as-,  in  civilized  nations,  private 
war  has  been  replaced  by  private  law,  and  interna- 
tional war  is  being  replaced  by  international  law.  In 
addition,  however,  to  the  evolutionary  steps  so  far 
indicated,  some  revolutionary  experiments  are  under 
way. 

.      .        ._       Three  legal  remedies  for  conflicts  over 
ments  in  distribution,  from  which  much  is  hoped, 

Australasia.  ^^^  ^^^  actually  on  trial  in  Australasia, 

and  only  in  Australasia.  They  are  (I)  state  competition 
with  monopolies,  (II)  the  fixing  of  a  Minimum  Wage, 
and  (III)  Compulsory  Arbitration. 

Australasia  being  so  remote,  specially  illustrates 
the  universal  unreliability  of  testimony  on  controverted 
subjects.  Sentimentality  and  the  equally  unreason- 
ing antagonism  which  it  tends  to  arouse  in  the  prac- 
tically disposed,  seem  to  make  it  almost  impossible 
for  observers  of  social  experiments  even  to  see  cor- 
rectly, not  to  speak  of  reporting  correctly.  The  latest 
writer  on  Australasia,  Dr.  Victor  S.  Clark,*  is  conspicu- 

*  "The  Labor  Movement  in  Australasia." 


290  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§274 

ous  bv  the  degree  to  which  he  has  risen  superior  to 
these  influences.  He  finds  both  good  and  evil  in  the 
minimum-wage  commissions  and  arbitration  courts, 
but  does  not  find  that  either  or  both  of  them  have 
introduced  the  millennium. 

The  interest  as  well  as  the  importance  of  the  subject 
justifies  a  special  chapter,  whose  material  I  have,  with 
the  author's  kind  sanction,  largely  drawn  from  Dr. 
Clark's  work. 

These  experiments  being  as  yet  (1907) 
slftstobl discount-  restricted  to  Australasia,  have  worked  only 
^°' d/f'^nT'^"''"'  ^^  ^^  exceptionally  homogeneous  ccm- 
munity,  in  which  British  stock  with  its 
broad-minded  love  of  fair  play  largely  predominates. 
Among  the  original  convicts,  many  were  high-minded 
persons  transported  for  purely  political  offences;  and 
much  of  the  later  colonization  has  consisted  of  large 
religious  organizations  possessing  capital,  character 
and  culture.  The  amount  of  convict  stock  to-day  is 
not  worth  considering. 

Dr.  Clark  says : 

"The  consciousness  of  national  kinship  ...  is  greater  than 
in  America,  and  for  this  reason  communal  sympathies  are  more 
active.  .  .  .  Production  is  confined  largely  to  raw  materials 
which  are  exported,  and  consumption  is  supplied  by  manu- 
factured goods  made  in  other  countries." 

[The  inference  that  wages  raised  by  legislation  will 
not  greatly  affect  prices  of  articles  bought  by  the 
voters,  seems  contradicted  later.] 

"The  government,  in  supplying  transport  service  for  the 
inflow  and  outflow  of  these  commodities,  has  become  the 
largest  employer  in  the  colonies.  .  .  .  The  custom  of  appealing 
to  the  government  to  decide  industrial  disputes  to  which  it  is 
a  party,  makes  it  easier  to  recur  to  the  same  authority  to  fix 
labor  conditions  in  private  employment.  .  .  .  Forty-seven  per 
cent,  of  the  people  reside  in  cities  of  not  less  than  four  thousand 
inhabitants,  as  compared  with  thirt^^-seven  per  cent,  in  the 
United  States.  The  average  concentration  of  working  popula- 
tion is  therefore  greater  in  those  countries,  and  the  labor 
element   has   better   opportunities   for   organization.   .   .  .  The 


§275<^]  Personal  Property.  291 

difference  in  the  wage  of  skilled  and  unskilled  workers  is  much 
greater  in  our  own  country,  where  the  common  laborer  is 
usually  either  a  negro  or  a  foreigner.  This  variation  of  wages 
in  the  United  States,  parallel  with  national  and  race  lines,  lessens 
solidarity  of  sentiment  and  class  consciousness  among  work- 
men." 

Mr.  Sidney  Webb  has  said: 

"Australian  politics  and  Australian  governments  are  very 
far  from  perfect,  but  their  faults  and  their  virtues  are  utterly 
unlike  the  faults  and  virtues  of  America." 

For  all  these  reasons,  how  the  Australasian  experi- 
ments would  work  among  the  mixed  population  of  the 
United  States,  or  especially  among  the  almost  entirely 
foreign  population  of  some  regions — and  those  gen- 
erally the  most  troublesome  regions — and  how,  more- 
over, they  would  work  under  our  almost  exclusively 
private  control  of  industries,  Australasian  experience 
gives  little  indication. 

275.  State  compe-  The  first  of  these  remedies  on  trial — 
tition  with  monopo-  state  competition  with  monopolies,  may 
''®^"  be    dismissed    with    a    few    words.     Dr. 

Clark  devotes  to  it  but  a  sentence,  tho  one  enthusiast 
who  has  discovered  in  it  a  panacea,  devotes  an  article 
in  a  recent  periodical.*  The  simple  facts  are  that 
before  there  were  any  monopolies  thought  of,  various 
Australasian  communities,  for  the  sake  of  aiding  immi- 
gration and  land  development,  started  most  of  the  va- 
rious   industries   which    will    be    described  later.     The 

government's  credit  being  better  than 
W capital.""'^'     that  of  individuals,  and  it  wishing  to  aid 

in  opening  up  the  new  lands,  it  borrowed 
money  to  lend  to  farmers.  This  of  course  brought 
the  rate  of  interest  down,  and  may  be  considered  to 
have  been  competition  with  monopoly  of  capital,  if 
such  a  thing  could  exist.  Of  course  the  indirect  effect 
of  other  government  enterprises  has  been  similar,  and 

*  Everybody's,  September,  1906. 


2p2  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  275  b 

275  (b).  In  some  it  may  be  possible  that  the  Australasians 
industries.  have  saved  more  in  keeping  prices  down, 

than  they  have  spent  in  taxes  to  pay  deficits  on  gov- 
ernment industries.  It  is  even  supposable  that  in  any 
community  where  there  is  enough  political  virtue  to 
conduct  government  enterprises  honestly,  it  may  be 
worth  while  to  pay  the  deficits  apt  to  result  from  their 
inevitable  inefficiency  as  compared  with  private  enter- 
prises, for  the  sake  of  guarding  against  monopolies. 
It  is  even  supposable  that  Australasia,  with  her  homo- 
geneous British  stock,  her  comparative  freedom  from 
the  demoralizing  glitter  of  superfluous  wealth,  and 
her  other  exceptional  conditions,  may  possess  the 
degree  of  political  virtue  needed  to  curb  monopoly 
by  government  competition.  But  nothing  has  yet 
been  done  for  the  mere  sake  of  that  result ;  and  should 
its  slight  indirect  accomplishment  so  far,  encourage 
to  successful  direct  efforts,  their  success  could  prove 
nothing  for  a  community  like  ours,  overwhelmed  with 
debased  immigration,  and  corrupted  by  the  spectacu- 
lar temptations  of  misplaced  superfluous  wealth. 

276.  The  Minimum  As  to  the  minimum  wage,  already  men- 
Wage,  tioned  (in  272  d,  which  the  student  is 
advised  to  re-read  in  this  connection),  in  Australasia, 
the  idea  has  been  worked  out,  according  to  Dr.  Clark, 
as  follows : 

"The  problems  presented  by  sweating  and  Chinese  compe- 
tition were  so  complex  and  required  so  much  detailed  regula- 
tion that  the  direct  intervention  of  Parliament  was  likely  to 
prove  cumbersome  and  inefifective.  Therefore  authority  to 
deal  with  these  questions  was  delegated  to  subordinate  bodies, 
called  minimum-wage  boards  .  .  .  and  composed  of  _men 
having  practical  knowledge  of  the  industry  under  their  juris- 
diction. .  .  .  Their  functions  do  not  exceed  in  principle  those 
exercised  by  railway  commissions  in  America^with  the  impor- 
tant reservation  that  they  affect  private  as  well  as  public  and 
quasi-public  industries.  The  Victorian  Parliament  .  .  .  gave 
the  boards  authority  to  prescribe  a  minimum  wage  for  em- 
ployees in  certain  classes  of  establishments.  This  authority 
was  granted  in  order  to  remedy  a  special  evil — a  wage  so  low 
276  (a).  Against  that  it  threatened  the  common  interest  of 
aweating.  society    in    maintaining    a    standard    of    living 


§276(i]  Personal  Property.  293 

among  all  classes  sufficient  for  healthy  social  progress.  .  .  .  The 
average  profits  of  manufacturers  are  no  higher  when  sweating 
is  rampant,  than  when  a  fair  wage  is  paid.  .  .  .  The  better 
276  (b).  Sought  by  employers  rather  courted  some  provision  that 
good  employers.  freed  them  from  the  competition  of  less  scrupu- 
lous men  of  their  own  class.  Moreover,  tho  the  detemiina- 
tions  of  wage  boards  are  legislative  acts,  in  essence  amendments 
to  the  factory  law,  they  preserve  in  some  degree  the  form  of 
a  vohmtary  agreement.  The  boards  who  pass  them  are  com- 
276  (c).  How  posed  of  an  equal  number  of  delegates  from  the 

regulated  employers  and  employees  in  the  trade  in  question, 

under  a  non-partisan  chairman,  and  their  decisions  are  fre- 
quently compromises,  formally  not  unlike  collective  bargains 
made  between  trade-unions  and  employers.  .  .  .  They  are 
required  to  ascertain  as  a  question  of  fact  the  average  wage 
paid  by  reputable  employers,  and  are  forbidden  to  fix  a  mini- 
mum higher  than  the  average  wage  as  thus  determined.  The 
boards  are  also  allowed  to  fix  special  rates  of  pay  for  aged, 
infirm  or  slow  workers.  .  .  .  Employers  have  applied  for 
eleven  of  the  thirty-eight  boards  established." 

The  Arbitration  Courts,  to  be  described  later,  seem  to 
be  rapidly  taking  over  the  functions  of  the  Minimum 
Wage  Boards,  with  results  not  quite  contemplated  by 
the  originators  of  either. 

276  (d).  Not  "  When  the  court  prescribes  a  minimum  equal 

always  effective,  to  or  above  the  average  wage  previously  paid, 
the  employer  may  meet  this  change  by  two  different  policies. 
In  order  to  keep  his  payroll  down,  he  often  lowers  the  pay  of  his 
more  competent  hands,  to  compensate  himself  for  the  higher 
rate  he  is  obliged  by  law  to  give  his  poorer  workers."  [Or,  second. 
New  Zealand]  "statistics  indicate  that  in  probably  a  third  of 
the  occupations  regulated  by  the  court,  the  maximum  wage 
does  not  exceed  the  minimum  fixed  by  the  award.  The  greatest 
variation  usually  occurs  in  industries  requiring  the  highest 
degree  of  skill.  In  such  industries  the  emplo\'er,  in  order  to 
maintain  a  gradation  of  wages  among  his  workmen,  usually 
discharges  his  less  efficient  employees. 

"Slow  workers,  who  are  not  a  negligible  element  in  the  in- 
dustrial army,  then  become  a  social  problem.  They  form 
from  ten  to  twenty  per  cent,  of  all  workmen,  and  their  distress 
is  an  evil  greater  than  ordinary'  unemployment.  Some  manu- 
facturers in  Victoria  dismissed  sixty  or  seventy'  hands  as  soon 
as  the  minimum  wage  went  into  effect  in  their  business.  The 
labor  party  proposes  to  remedy  this  evil  by  old-age  pensions.  To 
absorb  her  surplus  labor.  New  Zealand  has  undertaken  great 
public  works,  paid  for  from  loans.     Western  Australia  has  until 


294  T^^^^  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  276  <i 

recently  possessed  a  growing  field  of  employment  in  the  newly 
discovered  gold  districts.  New  South  Wales  and  Victoria  have 
not  enjoyed  these  exceptional  conditions,  and  in  the  latter  state 
especially,  the  problem  of  the  slow  worker  has  been  serious." 


276  (e)  Recru-  Even  Something  like  the  sweat-shop  is 

descence  of  the  beginning  to  appear — not  the  healthful 
sweat-shop.  hand  industry  of  earlier  times: 

"  Slow  workers  thrown  out  of  employment  by  the  minimum 
wage  sometimes  open  shops  in  basements  and  attics,  where 
they  make  goods  which  they  peddle  directly  to  retail  dealers, 
or  sell  to  factories  at  prices  lower  than  the  ordinary  cost  of 
manufacture.  This  has  occttrred  in  boot  and  harness  trades, 
and  to  some  extent  in  cigar-making.  However,  only  a  few 
industries  lend  themselves  to  this  process  of  dispersion.  No 
handworker  can  compete  with  the  products  of  power  machinery. 

"  Testimony  as  to  the  influence  of  the  boards  upon  sweating 
and  Chinese  competition  varies.  Both  continue  to  exist  in 
Melbourne.  I  have  seen  large  bundles  of  clothing  going  out 
of  factories,  to  be  made  up  by  contractors  who  were  evading 
board  determinations.  Few,  if  any,  strikes  have  occurred 
where  wage  determinations  are  in  force. 

276  (f).  Excep-  '  'All  the  Australasian  laws  give  the  regulating 

tions  allowed.  authority  power  to  fix  a  lower  rate  of  pav  for 

slow,  aged,  and  infirm  workers;  but  this  is  not  a  sufficient 
remedy.  Employers  refuse  to  receive  slow  workers  in  their 
shops,  because  they  slacken  the  pace  of  other  workmen.  I\Iore- 
over,  the  formalities  required  to  secure  slow-worker  permits 
embarrass  both  employee  and  employer. 

"  Therefore,  state  regulation  of  industry  places  a  burden  upon 
the  weaker  members  of  society." 

Apparently,  then,  one  effect  of  state  regulation  of 
wages,  even  in  its  short  experience,  is  just  what  the 
American  trade-unions  are  working  hardest  against — 
it  is  concentrating  industry  and  leaving  the  slow  work- 
man in  the  lurch. 

276  (g).  High  And   to   the   concentration   of   industry 

prices  resulting,  threatening  to  develop  into  the  trust,  to 
unemployment  and  to  the  sweat-shop,  are  added  high 
prices  which  nullify  a  raised  income  to  those  who  have 
it,  and  are  a  hardship  to  those  who  have  not: 

"All  regulations  restricting  the  freedom  of  employers  in  con- 
ducting their  business  probably  add  to  the  cost  of  production. 


§276^']  Personal  Property.  295 

.  .  .  Therefore  industrial  regulation  increases  the  cost  of 
living.  .  .  .  The  Secretary  of  Labor  in  New  Zealand  says  that 
'It  has  helped  to  minimize  any  advance  in  the  workers'  wages'." 

276  (h).  Bolstering  Already  efforts  are  in  progress  to  bolster 
up  needed.  yp    g.    policy    from    wliich    so    much    was 

hoped,  but  which  even  now,  in  these  important  respects, 
seems  a  failure.  Already  loom  up  the  usual  artificial 
remedies  to  remedy  a  remedy. 

"  The  wage-earner  is  the  direct  beneficiary  of  the  minimum 
wage ;  the  farmer  pays  the  increment  to  the  cost  of  production 
resulting  from  laws  and  awards,  directly  to  his  own  hands,  and 
indirectly  in  a  higher  price  for  commodities.  .  .  .  The  farmer 
cannot  recoup  himself  by  adding  to  the  price  of  his  produce, 
for  that  is  determined  in  the  London  markets.  .  .  .  The  farmers 
of  New  Zealand  and  Victoria,  where  the  rural  classes  are  rela- 
tively the  most  influential,  have  already  organized  an  active 
campaign  in  opposition  to  the  labor  party.  Likewise  the  fac- 
tory operative  whose  inanufactures  are  exported,  or  meet  the 
competition  of  imported  articles,  cannot  employ  an  arbitration 
law  to  raise  his  nominal  wages  without  lessening  employment 
and  defeating  his  own  end  of  social  betterment.  But  he,  like 
the  farmer,  must  pay  the  increased  price  for  local  services  and 
products  which  such  a  law  occasions,  and  thus  his  real  wage  is 
lowered  by  the  very  legislation  that  was  devised  for  his  welfare. 

"The  discretion  of  the  judge  checks  many  economic  evils 
that  might  result  from  state  regulation  of  industry.  The  in- 
crease of  prices  is  beyond  the  court's  control.   .   .   . 

"  Parliament  was  asked  officially  to  remedy  an  evil  by  which 
'the  advantages  bestowed  by  progressive  legislation  are  grad- 
ually being  nullified  and  will  eventtially  be  destroyed'.  A 
similar  demand  has  been  made  in  Victoria,  where  it  is  claimed 
that  so  long  as  the  government  fixes  wages,  it  should  also  fix 
prices  [which,  outside  of  a  few  monopolies,  no  government  has 
been  al3le  to  do  in  all  recorded  time];  for  the  free  manipulation 
of  the  latter  may  render  ineffective  any  regulation  of  the  former. 
The  same  suggestion  has  been  voiced  as  a  future  possibility  by 
the  leader  of  the  labor  party  in  New  South  Wales. 
276  (i).  Points  to  "  The  responsibility  of  the  state  for  a  living 

state  employment  wage,  logicallv  leads  to  the  responsibility  of  the 
and  socialism.  g^^te  for  employment   at  that  wage.      If  these 

two  functions  of  government  are  generally  recognized  as  moral 
duties,  and  are  realized  in  political  action,  the  result  is  state 
socialism.  .  .  .  Broader  knowledge  and  profounder  stvidy  than 
have  yet  been  devoted  to  this  subject  are  required  to  give  us 
conclusions  of  value." 


296  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§277 

The  provisions  for  "slow  workers"  cer- 
and'natufa'Maw*  tainly  look  as  if  the  law  had  begun  in  an 
effort  to  rise  superior  to  Natural  Law,  and, 
as  always  happens  in  such  a  case,  were  being  perforce 
tinkered  back  into  conformity  with  Nature.  This  gives 
a  very  discouraging  outlook  for  the  working  of  the 
Minimum  Wage  scheme,  but  while  all  caution  should  be 
used  not  to  go  counter  to  Nature,  it  should  never  be  for- 
gotten that  Nature's  processes,  when  ascertained,  can 
be  aided  by  human  intelligence  and  S3^mpathy,  and 
that  in  social  affairs,  experiments  are  as  justifiable  as  in 
mechanics  and  chemistry.  But  extravagant  and  explo- 
sive experiments  are  foolish  in  all.  More  in  regard  to 
the  experiments  of  the  Minimum  Wage  will  appear  as 
we  discuss  the  functions  of  the  Arbitration  Courts. 

A  decreed  and  enforced  wage  can  make  employers 
prefe?  to  stop  business,  or  can  make  employees  prefer 
to  beg;  but  it  can  never  secure  the  payment  of  wages 
materially  different  from  what  would  be  secured  by  the 
laws  of  supply  and  demand  acting  in  a  medium  of  fluid 
competition.  The  only  legitimate  function  of  Arbitra- 
tion Courts  (but  it  includes  many  others)  is  to  keep 
competition  fluid.  This  will  give  them  enough  to  do, 
and  give  them  glory  enough  if  they  do  it.  In  doing 

it,  they  inevitably  do  all  the  rational  work  that  Minimum 
Wage  Boards  can  do,  which  fact  is  abundantly  proved 
by  the  ease  with  which  the  courts  are  absorbing  the 
functions  of  the  boards. 

278.  The  Arbitra-  Regarding  Arbitration  Courts,  as  Aus- 
tion  Courts.  tralasia,  like  the  United  States,  is  made 

up  of  a  number  of  commonwealths  passing  most  of 
their  own  laws,  there  has  been  a  variety  of  experience, 
which  now  includes  experience  under  a  general  law 
for  the  whole  colony. 

Unlike  America,  where  the  immigrants  have  brought 
in  a  large  element  of  Latin  imagination  and  German 
sentimentalism,  Australasia  has  little  imagination,  senti- 
ment or  theory,  but  a  very  large  element  of  hard- 
headed  British  common  sense,  and  circumstances  pecul- 


§  278  a]  Personal  Property.  297 

iarly  favorable  to  its  exercise — a  homogeneous  British 
community,  plenty  to  do,  a  minimum  stupid  and  venal 
vote,  a  British  respect  (which  far  surpasses  our  alleged 
one)  for  education  and  experience,  and  (partly  in  conse- 
quence) a  salutar}^  scarcity  of  the  ranter  and  the  dema- 
gogue. The  curse  of  the  relations  between  Labor  and  En- 
terprise has  been  that  poisonous  product  of  rank  democ- 
racy. He  thrives  on  struggle:  arbitration  has  no  place 
for  him;  he  is  opposed  to  it.  His  attitude  is  that  the 
relations  between  employee  and  employer  are  those  of 
irrepressible  conflict  over  the  product.  Mr.  Gompers, 
the  present  successor  of  the  long  line  of  failures  at  the 
head  of  American  Labor,  has  said:  "It  is  a  fight." 
But  it  is  a  fight  in  which,  as  a  fight,  Labor  can  never 
have  any  permanent  success,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
as  fast  as  Labor  develops  honesty  and  brains,  the  bulk 
of  them  insensibly  drift  to  the  other  side,  in  the  ranks 
of  the  employers.  The  emplo^'-ers  who  were  not  drawn 
from  Labor's  ranks  are  too  few  to  be  worth  taking  into 
account.  While  the  labor-leaders  fatten  on  conflict, 
for  the  men  there  is  no  visible  hope  quicker  than  their 
slow  advance  in  productive  capacity,  and  the  slow 
increase  of  fluidity  in  competition,  of  justice  and  of 
sympathy,  unless  that  hope  be  compulsory  arbitration. 
The  hard-headed  Australasians  seem  to  have  real- 
ized all  this,  and  never  to  have  had  any  use  for  Mr. 
Powderly  or  Mr.  Debs  or  Sam  Parks  or  Mr.  Gom- 
pers with  his  "fight".  After  a  few  strikes  that  were 
passing  zephyrs  in  comparison  with  some  that  those 
men  have  stirred  up,  the  community  in  general,  ap- 
parently including  a  large  proportion  of  the  working- 
men,  did  not  propose  to  have  any  more  fight.  They 
278(a).  started  to  began  witli  asking  the  two  sides  to  arbi- 
preuent  strikes.  tratc,  and  giving  them  facilities,  and  when 
that  scheme  would  not  work,  they  forced  them  to  arbi- 
trate. The  general  motive  of  the  arbitration  laws  was 
to  protect  the  community  and  the  men's  families  from 
the  follies  of  strikes.  There  seems  to  have  been  no  claim 
made  that  the  men  were  not  at  liberty  to  damage  merely 
themselves. 


298  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  ^78  a 

It  will  help  the  reader  to  understand  the  development 
of  the  courts,  to  be  reminded  again  that  the  colony  is  a 
federation  of  states  somewhat  like  the  American  union. 
Of  these,  on  the  continent  of  Australia  are  five,  namely, 
Western  Australia,  South  Australia,  Queensland,  New 
South  Wales  (capital,  Sydney),  and  Victoria  (capital, 
Melbourne).  Something  over  a  hundred  miles  south  of 
the  continent,  lies  auQther  state,  Tasmania,  and  some 
twelve  hundred  miles  east  of  Australia,  and  a  little 
south,  is  still  another  state.  New  Zealand.  On  the 
eastern  side  of  the  continent  are  the  continental  states 
New  South  AVales  and  Victoria,  nearest  to  New  Zealand, 
which  share  with  it  the  leadership  in  population,  wealth, 
and  activity  in  social  experiment.  A  little  care  in 
memorizing  these  simple  facts  will  be  of  service  as  we 
proceed. 

The  first  Australasian  experiment  of  note  in  Com- 
pulsory Arbitration,  was  New  Zealand's  Industrial 
Arbitration  Act  of  1894,  much  expanded  in  1900  and 
adopted  in  its  main  features  by  Western  Australia  and 
New  South  Wales. 
-^.  ,    _  ,,  Efforts  have  been  made  in  almost  every 

279.  I  nettectivcncss 

of  Voluntary  civilized  State  to  reconcile  labor  disputes  by 

Arbitration.  boards    for    voluntary    conciliation,    such 

boards  being  often  established  by  legislation.  In  cases 
of  little  importance  their  awards  have  been  often 
accepted;  in  cases  of  great  importance,  seldom.  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt's  coal-strike  commission  recommended 
statutes  authorizing  governors  to  appoint  "commis- 
sions of  compulsory  investigation"  with  full  power  of 
calling  witnesses  and  examining  them  under  oath,  when 
labor  disputes  threaten  serious  disadvantage  to  the 
community.  The  mere  reports  of  such  commissions 
would  do  something  to  settle  disputes,  without  com- 
pulsory arbitration.  Nevertheless  after  several  seri- 
ous and  disgraceful  strikes  in  Australasia  during  the 
earlier  nineties  of  the  last  century,  Mr.  Reeves,  the  New 
Zealand  Minister  of  Labor,  made  a  very  thorough  study 
of  all  that  had  been  done  anywhere  by  way  of  arbitra- 
tion and  conciliation,  and  concluded  that  for  the  award 


§  2 So  a]  Personal  Property.  299 

to  have  any  effect,  it  must  be  compulsory,  or  at  least 
that  nothing  worth  while  had  been  accomplished  where 
the  award  was  not  compulsory,  a  main  difficulty  being 
that  it  was  very  hard  to  get  either  the  party  with  the 
weak  reasons,  or  the  one  with  "the  heaviest  artillery", 
to  go  into  court. 

oan  Thofi„*  So  in  1894  Mr.  Reeves  laid   before  the 

Compulsory  Arbi-  New  Zealand  Parliament  a  Compulsory 
trationAct.  Arbitration  Act.     It  begins  to  look  as  if 

this  step  in  the  little  parliament  of  an  island  in  the 
Pacific,  which  to  the  vast  majority  of  the  civilized  world 
is  little  more  than  a  name,  may  yet  be  regarded  as 
one  of  the  most  important  of  the  world's  pieces  of 
constructive  legislation.  I  am  not  prepared  to  suggest 
that  it  probably  will,  but  I  suspect  that  it  not  improbably 
may.  This  suspicion  I  have  reached  after  a  very  full 
faith  in  its  impracticability,  based  on  a  priori  con- 
siderations, followed  by  a  study  of  its  actual  results, 
including  those  of  similar  acts  in  Australasia  which 
have  sprung  from  it. 

Among  a  great  many  wise  and  careful  details,  the  act 
provided  that  the  court  should  be  appointed  by  the 
Governor  General,  and  consist  of  a  Judge  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  a  representative  of  workingmen  to  be  chosen 
from  a  list  submitted  by  them,  and  a  representative 
of  employers  similarly  selected. 

Operatives  could  appear  before  the 
S  'union!''"'""  court  Only  through  their  unions .  This  not 
only  to  avoid  petty  disputes,  but  because 
all  troubles  worth  avoiding  have  hitherto  come  from 
unions.  If  any  men  are  in  danger  of  losing  their  chance 
in  court,  the  law  requires  unions  to  admit  members 
freely,  and  but  seven  men  are  required  to  form  a  union 
where  none  exists. 

Employers  could  appear  individually  or  in  organiza- 
tions. 

The  tendency  was  to  favor  unionists  as  against  non- 
unionists,  because  the  former  must  bear  the  brunt  of 
the  contentions.     Non-unionists  could  not  go  into  court, 


300  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  280  a 

and  consequently  could  not  hale  their  emplo5^ers  into 
court,  but  they  were  free  to  strike. 

The  court  could  decide  or  dismiss  any  question  brought 
before  it,  and  there  is  no  appeal. 

Powers  of  summoning  witnesses  and  getting  expert 
advice  are  similar  to  those  of  courts  in  general;  even 
additional  members  of  the  court  could  be  elected  in 
special  cases. 

Books  of  account  could  be  called  for,  but  examined 
only  in  secret.  Yet  rather  than  produce  their  books, 
employers  have  sometimes  come  to  an  agreement  with 
their  men — and  in  one  case  at  least,  an  agreement  which 
was  renewed. 

Mr.  Lloyd,  who  wrote  in  1890,*  and  from  whom  most 
of  the  facts  regarding  the  Arbitration  Courts  up  to  his 
time,  have  been  taken,  says: 

'  It  is  a  curious  phenomenon  of  antipodal  ptiblic  opinion  that 
America  is  being  swept  by  waves  of  opposition  on  one  side 
of  society  to  trade-unions  and  of  opposition  on  the  other  side 
to  unions  of  capitalists,  while  in  New  Zealand  the  people  and 
the  government  favor  the  fullest  organization  of  both." 

This  raises  the  interesting  question  whether  with 
courts  in  which  to  fight  out  their  differences,  the  two 
extremes  of  the  industrial  world  might  not  keep  each 
other's  excesses  in  order,  without  the  rest  of  the  com- 
munity being  troubled  with  either. 

280  (b).  Could  dis-  Objectors  to  compulsory  arbitration  mis- 
misstnuiai  claims,  trusted  the  tendency  of  the  workmen  to 
appeal  to  the  courts  on  worthless  grounds,  and  to 
expect  from  them  impossible  results.  This  fear  has 
been  to  some  extent  justified;  but  men  will  not  risk 
strikes  for  reasons  as  worthless  as  some  that  lead  them 
to  seek  arbitration.  Yet  certainly  in  many  cases,  arbi- 
tration takes  the  place  of  strikes,  and  is  vastly  pref- 
erable to  strikes. 

Many  students  of  such  matters — prob- 

c .    amages,  ^^^^  ^^  would  be  safc  to  say  most — among 

whom  I  confess  myself  to  be  one,  believed  that  the 

*  "A  Country  without  Strikes",  by  Henry  Demarest  Lloyd. 


§  28od]  Personal  Property.  301 

compulsory  courts  would  be  ineffective,  mainly  on  the 
ground  that  nothing  could  be  recovered  when  damages 
were  given  against  people  who  had  nothing.  But  our 
expectations  have  been  confounded,  in  that  there  have 
been  no  occasions  to  decree  very  serious  damages. 
Occasions  for  great  damages,  like  strikes,  boycotts  and 
arson,  have  been  taken  care  of  by  the  preventive  ounce 
of  argument  and  adjudication,  rather  than  by  the  cura- 
tive pound  of  damages. 

280  (d)  Faithful  Another  objection  was  that  men  may 
acceptance  of  be  Compelled  to  work,  but  cannot  be  com- 
decrees.  pelled   to   work   efficiently.     Yet   a   good 

deal  of  efficient  work  has  been  done  under  the  coercion 
of  the  lash;  and  a  good  deal  more  under  the  coercion 
of  the  stomach;  and  the  coercion  of  a  respected  court 
where  one  has  been  fairly  heard,  hardly  seems  more 
repugnant  than  that  of  an  unsuccessful  strike,  espe- 
cially as  bitterness  has  seldom  been  engendered  in  reach- 
ing the  conclusions  of  the  courts. 

As  it  has  been  objected :  ' '  You  cannot  collect  damages 
from  the  poor  and  you  cannot  force  them  to  work  well 
if  they  do  not  want  to,"  so  it  has  been  objected:  "You 
cannot  make  men  conduct  business  under  conditions 
which  they  consider  unfair."  Yes,  you  can:  they 
would  rather  put  up  with  considerable  injustice  than 
have  their  capital  and  their  brains  lie  idle.  But  they 
need  not  be  irked  with  much  injustice  or  even  with 
any,  under  compulsory  arbitration:  all  these  objec- 
tions have  been  against  extreme  possibilities,  which, 
with  capable  and  well-meaning  courts,  have  seldom 
occurred,  and  as  the  courts  grow  in  experience,  are 
occurring  more  seldom. 

Mr.  Reeves  wrote  to  the  London  Times: 

"  Why  assume  that  the  awards  of  a  competent  tribunal  will  be 
intolerable  to  one  side  or  the  other?  It  is  likely  enough,  nay, 
certain,  that  all  awards  must  be  disagreeable  to  somebody, 
but  intolerable  is  a  word  which  presupposes  that  awards  are 
likely  to  be  made  which  will  involve  one  side  or  the  other  in 
ruin,  or  drive  it  to  desperation." 


302  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  2S0  e 

„„. ,  ,   „  Another   obiection   was   that   you   can- 

280  (e).  Compe-  -^11  j     -x  11 

tence  of  courts  in    not   iix  wages  by  law ;    and  it  was  well 

business  affairs.        ^^^^^^    -f   ^^^    ^^^   ^^    ^^   ^^^^^    COUnter   tO 

natural  law.  But  the  object  of  the  court  has  been  to 
ascertain  from  very  thorough  investigation  what  wages 
naturally  should  be,  and  so  decree  them.  Probably 
the  job  is  generally  better  done  in  that  w^ay,  than 
through  a  strike  or  a  lockout. 

It  has  also  been  urged  that  you  could  not  get  prac- 
tical business  wisdom  out  of  a  court.  But  the  world 
has  been  doing  that  for  a  good  many  centuries,  and 
that,  too,  before,  as  in  Australasia,  business  men  were 
made  members  of  the  court,  with  power  to  call  in  others 
as  need  might  arise. 

280  (f).  Effect  on  The  Ncw  Zealand  law  left  the  parties  to 
strikes.  fight  it  out  if  neither  of  them  cared  to  go 

into  court,  but  they  have  generally  preferred  to  go 
into  court.  Yet  since  the  problematic  law  went  into 
force  in  1895,  there  has  been  among  the  men  subject 
to  it  (the  public  railroad  employees  in  the  strike  of 
1903  were  not),  no  labor  disturbance  which  an  Ameri- 
can would  dignify  by  the  name  of  a  strike.  But  Dr.  Clark 
tells  us  that 

*'  Even  before  the  New  Zealand  act  was  passed,  the  relations 
of  employers  and  employees  in  that  colony  were  normally  so 
harmonious  that  it  is  difficult  to  show  positively  that  the 
industrial  peace  at  present  prevailing  is  due  to  legislation.  In 
New  South  Wales  and  Western  Australia  strikes  of  some  con- 
sequence have  occurred  in  defiance  of  the  court." 

>-enrf  of  -^^^  ^^  kindred  laws  were  enacted  in  other 
the  courts  and  un-  statcs  of  the  federation,  and  finally  in 
expected  act, uity.  ^^^^  ^  general  law  for  the  whole  federa- 
tion, they  have  been  obliged  to  go  into  court,  but  their 
doing  so  has  seldom  been  with  any  reluctance.  This  is 
not  the  place  to  recount  the  differences  in  these  Acts 
and  their  results.  We  have  room  only  for  such  details 
as  characterize  at  least  the  majority  of  them. 

The  Conciliation  Boards  in  existence  when  the  Act 
was  formed,  were  not  disturbed  by  it.  Moreover,  the 
court  has  a  right  to  create  minor  boards  of  conciliation 


§  2Sof]  Personal  Property.  303 

and  arbitration.  An  appeal  from  them  to  the  Arbitra- 
tion Court  was  of  course  allowed.  Mr.  Reeves  ex- 
pected them  still  to  settle  seven-tenths  of  the  cases 
(probably  relying  on  the  coercion  latent  in  the  appeal), 
and  one  of  the  believers  in  the  court,  probably  for  the 
same  reason,  said  that  it  would  not  be  used  once  in 
twenty  years.  Up  to  1900,  instead  of  being  restricted  to 
a  tenth  of  the  cases,  it  had  settled  two-thirds  of  them. 
280  <h)  Both  sides  ^^  unexpected  development  was  a  tend- 
arraiiged  cases  to  ency  for  employers  to  arrange  with  their 
men  to  get  cases  before  the  courts  which 
would  bring  decisions  controlling  dishonest  and  sweat- 
ing competitors.  This  effect  was  similar  to  that  already 
noted  in  the  case  of  the  Minimum  Wage  Boards — in  fact, 
seems  to  be  another  illustration  of  the  tendency  of  the 
Arbitration  Courts  to  assume  the  functions — indirect 
as  well  as  direct — of  those  boards.  Thus  men  who 
wanted  to  cut  wages  in  order  to  cut  prices,  have  often 
been  restrained.  The  wisdom  of  the  court  has  un- 
doubtedly prevented  this  from  being  a  serious  damage 
to  legitimate  competition,  yet  on  the  other  hand,  its 
effect  on  prices  has  probably  not  invariably  been  for 
the  good  of  the  whole  community,  as  already  indicated 
regarding  the  Wages  Boards,  and  as  will  farther  appear 
later. 

The  courts  provide  rates  "for  superior,  average  and 
inferior  men.  No  one  can  be  employed  for  less  than 
the  average,  except,  as  has  been  already  explained,  men 
not  competent  to  earn  the  average,  and  the  rate  paid 
them  must,  if  questioned,  be  sanctioned  by  the  local 
Board  of  Conciliation". 

The  success  of  such  an  arrangement,  should  it  con- 
tinue, would  seem  to  illustrate  how  a  law  that  cer- 
tainly never  would,  and  hardly  could,  be  voluntarily 
obeyed  in  spirit  by  those  upon  whom  it  is  enjoined, 
can  be  helped  into  a  working  condition  by  a  court 
well  adapted  to  the  requirements  of  the  situation. 
280  (i).  Courts  Experience  has  abundantly  shown  that 

tried  to  follow        all    the    succcssful    miuimum-wage    fixing 
must  at  best  resolve  itself  into  a  declara- 


304  Tlie  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  2S0  i 

tion,  by  an  honest  and  painstaking  autho^it3^  of  what 
conditions  point  to  as  the  natural  rate  of  wages,  and 
this  certainly  is  a  great  deal  better  than  a  determina- 
tion of  them  by  boycott,  arson  and  murder.  Mr.  Lloyd 
quoted  an  anonj^^^mous  commentator  to  the  effect: 

"  Compulsor}^  arbitration  does  not  attempt  any  interference 
with  the  'law  of  the  market'.  On  the  contrary,  it  gives  the 
'law  of  the  market '  for  the, first  time  a  full  chance  to  work.  It 
brings  the  'law  of  the  market'  into  full  and  free  discussion. 

"  'Fixing  by  law'  is  an  odious  phrase.  How  about  fixing 
prices  by  the  fiat  of  a  corporation  or  a  capitalist,  or  by  bayonets, 
or  by  star\'ation  or  intimidation?  Here,  'law'  means  debate: 
the  lack  of  it  means  destruction  for  the  men.  The  law  does  not 
dictate  or  fix  wages,  but  merel}^  decides  in  a  dispute  between 
two  different  views  of  what  wages  should  be.  'Law'  fixes 
creditors'  shares  in  bankruptcy,  lowers  Irish  and  Scotch  rents, 
fixes  the  price  of  ferries,  railroads,  the  salaries  of  state  officials, 
rate  of  taxation." 

280  ry;.  Courts  As  already  said,  the  first  court,  in  New 
power  of  initiatiue.  Zealand,  could  be  put  in  motion  only  by 
one  of  the  parties  to  a  controversy.  But  the  present 
usage  empowers  a  court  to  take  up,  of  its  own  motion, 
any  apparent  industrial  abuse.  But  even  under  the 
primitive  practice,  Mr.  Llo^^d  was  hopeful  enough  (He 
has  often  been  accused  of  being  too  hopeful)  to  say : 

"  Trusts  like  those  now  coming  into  favor  in  England,  such 
as  that  of  the  bedstead-makers  of  Birmingham,  in  which  the 
masters  and  the  men  have  united  to  fleece  the  public,  would 
not  be  very  promising  subjects  for  compulsory  arbitration." 

He  continues : 

280  (li)-  Question  "  Another  objection  often  made  is,  that  in 
of  overcrowding.  consequence  of  the  law,  industry  is  disturbed 
by  the  frequency  of  disputes ;  but  when  I  looked  into  the  number 
of  cases  before  the  court,  I  found  that  there  had  only  been  about 
fifty  in  five  years,  about  one  case  a  month.  .  .  .  This,  too,  it  is 
only  fair  to  remember,  is  the  number  of  disputes  at  the  beginning 
of  the  administration  of  the  law.  Every  decision  that  settles 
questions  makes  precedents  that  will  prevent  other  disputes 
from  being  brought  forward." 

This  is  one  of  Mr.  Lloyd's  optimisms.  In  the  half- 
dozen  years   since   he  wrote,  things   have  moved  fast, 


§  28 1]  Personal  Property.  305 

and,  as  will  be  shown,  experience  has  not  altogether 
continued  the  rosy  look  which  the  experiments  bore 
nearer  their  dawn.  But  while  unanticipated  difficulties 
and  abatements  have  arisen,  enough  success  to  justify 
the  experiment  still  seems  possible.  But  there  is 
abundant  evidence  that  the  courts  have  been  some- 
times overcrowded,  and  that  too  by  questions  so  trivial 
that  they  have  sometimes  refused  to  consider  them. 
He  himself  quotes  a  "labor  member"  of  one  of  the 
boards  to  the  effect: 

"Agitators  foment  disturbances  to  bring  the  masters  before 
the  court.  It  is  suspected  sometimes  that  even  members 
of  the  Conciliation  Board,  who  are  paid  for  the  number  of  days 
they  sit,  do  the  same  thing.  But  which  is  worse,  that  agitators 
should  foment  arbitration,  or  foment  strikes?" 

The  effect  of  compulsory  arbitration  has  been  pecul- 
iarly happy  on  the  condition  of  women  workers.  Even 
if  Mr.  Lloyd's  psean  in  his  chapter  "A  New  Song  of 
the  Shirt"  was  pitched  some  notes  too  high,  there  is 
no  doubt  that  a  paean  is  justified. 

281.  Aspects  in  The    following    passages    throw    much 

1890.  light  on  the  case,  or  at  least  on  one  side 

of  it,  as  it  looked  about  1890. 

"The  subject  came  up  one  day  in  a  group  at  the  club  in 
Wellington.  One  of  the  critics  of  the  law  quoted  triumphantly 
from  a  letter  of  Lord  Thring's:  'Is  it  conceivable  that  at  the 
close  of  the  nineteenth  century  either  masters  or  men  would 
submit  to  such  a  tyrannical  judicial  interference  with  their 
liberty  ? ' 

"  'For five  years',  replied  one  of  the  New  Zealand ers,  'masters 
and  men  have  been  stibmitting.  They  may  not  be  satisfied. 
Where  anywhere  are  there  satisfied  capitalists  or  laborers? 
Where  is  there  an  employer  who  would  not  like  to  pay  less, 
where  the  workingman  who  would  not  like  to  get  more?  But 
they  are  all  at  work,  though  not  satisfied.  In  New  Zealand 
it  is  proved  that  the  Arbitration  Court  can  make  decisions 
which  both  sides  would  rather  accept  than  to  quit,  as  they 
always  have  the  right  to  do  '. " 

And  now  a  word  on  one  of  the  excesses  of  theory 
which  the  Arbitration  Courts  have  stimulated.  Mr. 
Lloyd  stated  it  in  perfect  good  faith,  as  follows: 


3o6  "         The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§282 

"  The  New  Zealand  court  has  but  jtist  touched 
282.  "  *'|?°^y.  °'      in  its  decisions  on  the  most  important  principle 

^  '^       '     at    issue    in   the   regulation   of   wages — whether 

wages  must  follow  prices  or  prices  wages.  Must  wages  be 
dependent  on  prices  necessary  to  market  commodities,  or  must 
these  prices  be  dependent  on  the  wages  necessary  to  maintain 
the  people  in  decent  comfort  ? 

"  The  workingman's  mind  is  evidently  moving  to  the  latter 
position.  Several  of  the  greatest  strikes  of  recent  j^ears,  like 
the  English  coal  strike  of  "1893,  and  the  strike  in  Lord  Penrhyn's 
quarries,  have  had  the  'living  wage'  for  their  inspiring  principle, 
and  this  new  position  of  the  workingmen  in  those  strikes 
received  the  open  support  of  some  of  the  most  influential  mem- 
bers of  Parliament,  newspapers,  an'd  even  capitalists  of  Great 
Britain. 

' '  This  doctrine  seeks  to  make  true  the  fiction  of  John  Stuart 
Mill  that  wages  are  determined  by  the  standard  of  living  among 
the  workingmen.  What  John  Stuart  Mill  said  was  the  law  of 
wages,  the  workingmen  are  seeking  to  bring  about.  The  New 
Zealand  law,  the  moment  that  this  new  political  economy  that 
prices  must  follow  wages  invades  the  bench,  can  be  made  a 
powerful  instrument   in  reinforcing  the  workingmen." 

This  is  no  more  or  less  than  one  of  the  raise-yourself- 
by-your-bootstraps  notions  of  which  we  see  so  many: 
somebody  has  got  to  pay  those  wages,  and  nobody  has 
an  unHmited  store  to  pay  them  with. 

Some  of  Mr.  Lloyd's  final  conclusions  in  1S90  are 
worth  quoting,  partly  as  bases  for  comparison  with 
later  writers. 

"  There  is  only  one  Compulsory'  Arbitration  law 

^^^'1  ^^I'^no  i^iQ^nn  in  the  world,  and  that  has  been  in  operation  only 
conclusions  in  laUU.  r  i    ■  •     i   ^     i  ^  i 

tour  years  and  m  an  isolated  country,  and  we 

must  not  generalize  too   freely.     Similar  laws  might   operate 

differently  in  different  countries.   .   .   . 

"  Strikes  and  lockouts  have  been  stopped. 

"  Wages  and  terms  have  been  fixed  so  that  manufacturers 
can  make  their  contracts  ahead  without  fear  of  disturbance. 

"  Workingmen,  too,  knowing  that  their  income  cannot  be  cut 
down  nor  locked  out,  can  marrj',  buy  land,  build  homes. 

"  Disputes  arise  continually,  new  terms  are  fixed,  but  in- 
dustn-  goes  on  without  interruption. 

"  The  country  is  more  prosperous  than  ever. 

"  Compulsion  in  the  background  makes  conciliation  easier. 

"  Compulsory  publicity  gives  the  public,  the  real  arbitrator, 
all  the  facts  of  every  dispute. 

"  Peaceable  settlement  with  their  men  has  been  made  possible 


§  285]  Personal  Property.  307 

for  the  majorities  of  the  employers  who  wanted  to  arbitrate, 
but  were  prevented  by  minorities  of  their  associates. 

"  Humane  and  law-abiding  business  men  seek  the  protection 
of  the  law  to  save  themselves  from  destruction  by  the  competi- 
tion of  inhumane  and  law-breaking  rivals. 

"  The  victory  is  given  as  nearly  as  possible  to  the  right  instead 
of  to  the  strong,  as  in  war. 

"  If  the  American  people  have  any  lessons  to  learn  from  these 
experiences  of  New  Zealand,  they  can  be  trusted  to  learn  them. 
The  object  of  the  writer  has  not  been  to  enforce  his  views, 
but  to  present  the  facts  of  an  interesting  social  experiment,  on 
which  the  public  could,  if  it  chose,  build  views  of  its  own. 

"Of  course,  'our  circumstances  are  different'.  Our  circum- 
stances have  not  been  so  different  but  that  they  have  developed 
the  same  evils.      Perhaps  they  may  develop  the  same  remedy. 

"  And  as  for  the  isolation,  that  is  a  fortunate  incident  for  the 
weak,  but  the  United  States  has  a  nobler  kind  of  isolation  in 
its  might  and  wealth.  It  can  stand  alone  for  any  cause  it 
chooses  to  espouse." 

At  this  point  we  turn  more  definitely  to 
fn^'903.''"  '^'''"'  Mr.  Reeves,*  the  father  of  the  New  Zea- 
land Arbitration  Act,  whom  future  ages 
may  perhaps  give  a  high  place  among  the  contributors 
to  the  welfare  of  mankind.  His  attractively  written, 
instructive  and  interesting  book  of  course  is  from  his 
point  of  view,  but  it  seems  to  be  admirably  candid.  It 
appeared  some  three  years  later  than  Mr.  Llovd's,  when 
Mr.  Reeves's  revolutionary  Act  of  1894  had  been  work- 
ing eight  years,  and  had  become  the  parent  of  others. 
285.  Claims  con-  He  tclls  US  that  from  1895  to  1900  under 
tinued  success.  the  Act,  factory  hands  in  New  Zealand  in- 
creased from  30,000  to  49,000,  and  export  trade  grew 
from  1894  to  1901  nearly  50%;  factories  from  1896  to 
1 901  nearly  30%,  and  total  wages  paid  nearly  60% 
(which  seems  to  indicate  an  advance  of  nearly  20% 
in  the  rate  of  wages),  and  manufacturing  output  grew 
in  the  same  time  about  80%. 

There  had  been  but  half  a  dozen  strikes  up  to  1903. 
Half  of  these  were  among  government  employees,  who 
did  not  come  under  the  authority  of  the  court,  and 
nearly  all  were  settled  by  voluntary  appeal  to  the  court. 

*  Reeves,  William  Pember:  State  Experiments  in  Australia 
and  New  Zealand,  2  vols. 


3o8  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§285 

In  1900,  when  propositions  to  thoroughly  revise  the 
act  were  before  the  legislature,  only  one  man  spoke  un- 
favorably of  it. 

286.  Judge  Back-  I^  igoi  New  South  Wales  was  medita- 
house's  testimony,  ting  a  similar  act,  and  sent  Judge  Back- 
house, a  cool,  able  and  experienced  man,  to  investigate 
the  working  of  the  court  in  New  Zealand  (1,200  miles 
off,  over  seas).     His  conclusions  were: 

"  The  Act  has  prevented  strikes  of  any  magnitude,  and  has, 
on  the  whole,  brought  about  a  better  relation  between  employers 
and  employees  than  would  exist  if  there  were  no  Act.  It  has 
enabled  the  increase  of  wages  and  the  other  conditions  favorable 
to  the  workmen  which,  under  the  circumstances  of  the  colony, 
they  are  entitled  to,  to  be  settled  without  that  friction  and 
bitterness  of  feeling  which  otherwise  might  have  existed;  it 
has  enabled  employers,  for  a  time  at  least,  to  know  with  cer- 
tainty the  conditions  of  production,  and  therefore  to  make 
contracts  with  the  knowledge  that  they  would  be  able  to  fulfil 
them ;  and  indirectly  it  has  tended  to  a  more  harmonious  feeling 
among  the  people  generally,  which  must  have  worked  for  the 
weal  of  the  colony.  A  very  large  majority  of  the  employers  of 
labor  whom  I  interviewed  are  in  favor  of  the  principle  of 
the  Act.  One  only  did  I  meet  who  said  out  and  out,  'I  would 
rather  repeal  it  and  have  a  straight  stand-up  fight',  while 
another  was  doubtftd  whether  the  present  condition  was  better 
than  the  pre-existing.  The  first,  in  a  letter,  has  since  con- 
siderably modified  his  statement." 

Mr.  Reeves  thinks  this  "too  roseate  a  view  of  the 
feelings  of  employers." 

In  1 90 1,  Judge  Backhouse's  report  was  followed  by 
a  Compulsory  Arbitration  Act  in  New  South  Wales; 
one  was  passed  in  Western  Australia  in  1902,  and  one 
for  the  whole  federation  in  1904. 

These  Acts  differ  much  in  detail,  which  of  course 
cannot  be  entered  into  here,  but  they  are  a  necessary 
and  far  from  unattractive  study  for  any  one  wishing  to 
I)romote  the   substitution,   anywhere,   of  law  for  war. 

287.  The  courts  to  The  New  South  Wales  Act  does  not 
keep  the  peace.  make  it  necessary  for  either  party  to  a 
quarrel  voluntarily  to  go  to  court  before  the  court  can 
act:  the  registrar  may  call  the  parties  into  court,  and 
this  on  the  grounds  as  stated  by  Mr.  Wise,  the  framer  of 


§  28g]  Personal  Property.  309 

the  Act,  that  "combatants  who  are  bringing  an  industry 
to  a  dead  stop  should  be  regarded  as  brawlers  in  a  street 
who  check  traffic  with  their  quarreling:  they  should  be 
made  to  move  on." 
Mr.  Reeves  says: 

288.  Details  by  "It  will  be  urged,  doubtless,  that  until  some 

Mr.  Reeves.  body  of  men  has  doggedly,  or  perhaps  violently, 

refused  to  obey  a  compulsory  award  and  been  forced  to  the 
knees  by  legal  process,  the  strength  of  the  Act  will  not  have 
been  thoroughly  tested.  Might  it  not,  however,  be  urged  that 
the  true  strength  of  the  Act  is  being  shown  by  the  absence  of 
such  incident?  Does  not  the  growth  of  a  habit  of  peaceful 
acceptance  of  decisions  hold  out  the  best  hope  of  ultimate 
success  for  the  system? 

"  Passing  from  objections,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  experiment 
seems  on  the  way  to  prove  several  useful  points.  First,  it  shows 
that  trade-unionists  may  be  persuaded  by  the  logic  of  experience 
to  prefer  arbitration  to  conflict,  and  that  their  unions  may  grow 
and  prosper  in  consequence.  Next,  that  the  compulsory  deci- 
sions of  a  state  tribunal  may  be  quite  as  just  and  moderate 
as  those  of  a  private  conciliation  board,  and  that  obedience  to 
thein  need  not  mean  ruin  to  an  employer,  or  cruel  hardship 
to  work-people.  Next,  the  working  of  the  Act  has  not  strangled 
industry  or  fettered  enterprise ;  trade  and  business  have  steadily 
improved  under  it.  Lastly,  instead  of  it  being  found  impossible 
to  assert  the  Arbitration  Court's  authority,  there  is  no  serious 
difliculty  in  enforcing  its  decisions;  indeed,  the  enforcement  of 
awards,  which  is  assumed  by  English  a  priori  critics  to  be  out  of 
the  question,  has,  so  far,  been  found  in  practice  to  be  by  no 
means  the  most  troublesome  part  of  the  work  of  industrial 
arbitration." 

In  1903,  Mr.  Reeves  left  the  laws  in  the  following 
condition : 

"  Though  not  yet  twelve  months  old,  Mr.  Wise's  Act  has  already 
ceased  to  be  the  newest  arbitration  law  in  the  colonies.  The 
West  Australians,  finding  their  Act  of  1900  defective,  decided 
not  to  amend  but  to  repeal  it.  Accordingly,  in  February  1902, 
they  displaced  it  with  a  new  enactment  which  followed  more 
closely  the  New  Zealand  model.  It  is  noteworthy  that,  despite 
the  example  of  New  South  Wales,  this  statute  makes  provision 
for  boards  of  conciliation." 

289  Dr  Clark  in         Next,  in  1906,  Dr.  Clark  *  takes  up  the 

1906  not  quite  so     narrative.     He    wrote    when    the    courts 

op  imis  ic.  were   of    course    much    more    developed, 

*  Op.  cit. 


3IO  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  289 

and  I  shall  quote  from  him  farther  details  of  their 
constitution  and  working  in  their  developed  shape, 
as  well  as  the  latest  results,  which  are  not  in  all 
respects  quite  what  the  earlier  writers  counted  on. 
As  the  brief  quotations  cannot  do  justice  to  his  fuller 
exposition,  I  shall  emphasize  an  occasional  point  by 
italics  not  his.  The  reader's  patience  is  invoked  for 
some  repetitions  arising  mainly  from  comparisons  with 
earlier  conditions,  and  "from  the  increased  number  and 
variety  of  the  courts. 

As  now  constituted,  the  Arbitration  Courts  have  all 

„„.   „     ,  the  powers  of  ordinary  courts,  and  their 

290.  Courts  now        ,      .  ^  ^         ^  ■      .    ^  1         , 
have  legislative       decisions  are  not  subject  to  appeal  unless 

P°*®'''  their    interpretation    of   the    act    creating 

them  is  in  question.     They  have  also  legislative  power: 

"The  general  intent  of  the  law  is  to  give  the  court  power 
to  settle  every  point  that  might  cause  a  strike  or  lockout. 
[The  government  employees  were  not  subject  to  compulsory 
arbitration,  and]  a  strike,  in  1903,  tied  up  the  transportation 
of  Victoria.  This  disturbance  was  accompanied  by  incidents 
that  would  have  rendered  the  strikers  liable  to  penal  punishment 
in  America,  and  would  have  been  discountenanced  by  our 
trade-unions.  Trains  were  deserted  by  their  crews  wherever 
they  chanced  to  be  when  the  strike  began,  stranding  passen- 
gers and  perishable  merchandise  in  out-of-the-way  places,  and 
endangering  life  and  property.  The  public  answered  this 
challenge  to  its  authority  by  a  strike  law  more 

291.  Laws  against    drastic  than  any  legislation  ventured  by  Ameri- 

cans in  the  most  acute  crises  of  their  civil  war. 
This  law  imposed  a  penalty  of  nearly  five  hundred  dollars  or 
twelve  months'  imprisonment  for  engaging  in  a  strike  on  govern- 
ment railways,  and  made  men  liable  to  arrest  without  warrant 
or  bail  for  advising  a  strike  orally  or  by  publication,  or  for  col- 
lecting funds  for  the  support  of  strikers,  or  for  attending  any 
meeting  of  more  than  six  persons  for  the  purpose  of  encourag- 
ing strikers. 

"Arbitration  acts  derive  their  authority  from  the  police 
powers  of  government.  They  are  measures  to  prevent  industrial 
disorder.   .   .   . 

"  The  New  Zealand  law  prohibits  .  .  .  strikes  and  lock- 
outs .  .  .  while  proceedings  relating  to  the  dispute  are  pending, 
and  for  a  sufficient  time  beforehand  to  allow  either  party  to  be- 
gin proceedings  if  he  so  desires.  .  .  .  The  new  federal  Act  pro- 
hibits strikes  and  lockouts  unconditionally,  without  regard  to 
whether  they  are  begun  prior  or  subsequent  to  giving  an  award. 


§  295]  Personal  Property.  311 

"The  [New  Zealand]  law  prohibits  strikes  and 

292.  Current  law  lockouts  among  workers  and  employers  in 
th™t'  t'l!^"'''^'  'T^^l^^^ed.  industries.  Parliament  has  defined  all 
thetic  strikes.  building  trades  as  related  industries.  The  court 
may  extend  this  provision  to  other  groups  of  employments. 
Consequently  if  an  award  has  been  given  in  the  bricklaying  trade, 
for  instance,  the  mortar-mixers  or  the  hod-carriers  cannot  tie 
up  that  trade  by  a  strike,  although  unwilling  to  lay  their  case 
before  the  court. 

"A    second   contingency   bringing   parties    in- 

293.  And  makes  voluntarily  under  the  act,  is  where  an  award 
awards  binding  in  j^^g  ^ieen  given  in  their  industry  limited  to 
adjoining  districts.  ^^^^  ^^^^^^  portion  of  the  colony.  The  employers 
or  workers  subject  to  the  award  might  be  injured  in  such  in- 
stances by  the  competition  of  employers  or  workers  in  the  dis- 
tricts not  subject  to  its  provisions.  If  so,  they  may  have  the 
award  extended  to  establishments  in  the  competing  district. 
The  purpose  of  this  extension  is  not  to  prevent  strikes,  but  in 
equalizing  cotnpetition  they  are  incidentally  prohibited." 

This  provision  has  been  abused  by  starting  a  strike 
in  one  jurisdiction  where  a  certain  decision  may  be 
expected,  in  order  to  make  the  decision  effective  in 
an  adjoining  jurisdiction  where  it  probably  could  not 
be  obtained. 

294.  Awards  -^s  was  to  be  expected,  the  stringent 
evaded.  control  of  the  Arbitration  Courts  is  often 
and  easily  evaded.     Dr.  Clark  gives  an  illustration: 

"A  service  may  be  embodied  in  a  commodity,  and  trans- 
ferred as  an  element  or  quality  of  a  material  object.  To  illus- 
trate concretely,  an  arbitration  court  may  fix  a  day  rate  to  be 
paid  to  saddlers,  and  a  piece-work  rate  for  every  operation  of 
making  a  saddle;  but  its  jurisdiction  does  not  extend  to  regu- 
lating the  sale  of  the  leather,  saddle-tree,  and  other  materials 
out  of  which  a  saddle  is  manufactured,  or  to  the  sale  of  a  com- 
pleted saddle.  Therefore,  a  manufacturer  may  sell  these  ma- 
terials to  a  workman,  and  the  latter  may  sell  the  finished 
product  to  the  manufacturer  at  a  higher  price  than  the  materials 
cost,  but  at  a  lower  price  than  the  cost  of  making  prescribed 
by  the  court  plus  the  cost  of  the  materials." 

Regarding  the  immediate  effects  of  the  decisions,  he 
says: 

"It  is  impossible  to  give  an  arbitration  court 

295.  Hard  to  fit  ^  course  in  technology  with  each  new  set  of 
conditions.  j.  t^i  ^>     j     ■  ■  u 

proceedings    ...    Ihe  court  s  decisions  seldom 


312  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§295 

adapt  themselves  perfectly  to  working  conditions,  and  continue 
to  be  a  chafing  shoe  upon  the  feet  of  industry. 

"A  dispute  before  a  court  is  less  serious  than  a  strike.   .  .   . 
But   these   suits  occasion   expense   and  Joss   of 

296.  Danger  of  time,  and  check  industry  so  far  as  they  render 
over-regu  a  ion.  uncertain  future  conditions  of  production.  There 
are  single  employers  in  Australia  who  work  under  as  many  as 
seven  awards.  The  total  effect  of  having  these  disputes  con- 
stantly at  issue — and  they  may  await  decision  a  j^ear  or  more — 
resembles  that  of  an  agitation  for  tariff  revision  in  the  United 
States. 

'Litigation  is  multiplied,  because  workmen  will  bring  a  case 
before  the  court  where  they  would  not  risk  a  strike.  So  great 
is  this  evil  that  the  court  in  New-  South  Wales  has  recently 
adopted  the  policy  of  giving  artificially  created  disputes  no 
standing  in  fact.  It  has  been  proposed  to  require  the  consent 
of  a  large  number  of  workers  to  start  a  dispute.  But  these 
are  palliatives,  not  remedies.   .   .   . 

297.  Promotes cen-  "Uniform  conditions  of  employment  favor 
tailization  of  either  the  big  or  the  little  proprietor  more  than 
industry.  his  competitor.  .  .  .  Large  merchants  and  man- 
ufacturers are  said  to  have  entered  into  collusive  agreements 
with  their  employees  to  secure  orders  from  the  court  detrimental 
to  their  smaller  competitors.  .  .  .  Consequently,  an  economic 
tendency  of  industrial  regulation  is  to  centralize  industry." 

The  very  result  that  all  the  fierce  agitation  against 
trusts  in  the  United  States  is  seeking  to  overthrow! 

To  this  significant  objection  from  the  worker's 
side,  Dr.  Clark  adds: 

"As  the  average  workers  are  in  a  majority  and 

298.  And  uniform-  control  the  unions,  .  .  .  their  influence  alone 
ity  of  wages.  shapes  the  policy  of  the  arbitration  authorities 

from  the  side  of  the  workingmen.  This  influence 
secures  conditions  of  employment  that  discount  exceptional 
ability,  and  deaden  the  enterprise  of  more  ambitious  workers.  .  .  . 
The  value  of  their  potential  excess  of  service  is  thus  lost  to  them- 
selves and  the  community.  .  .  .  [The  court]  cannot  reverse  the 
laws  of  gravity  and  enable  the  working  people  to  raise  them- 
selves by  their  bootstraps  to  a  higher  economic  plane.  Its 
orders  must  conform  to  economic  law,  or  be  speedily  rendered 
ineffective  by  contact  with  stubborn  facts.  Consequently,  awards 
ultimately  become  mere  formal  statements  of  average  condi- 
tions of  employment." 

299.  But  so  mini-  I^^  Other  words,  the  courts  and  Minimum 
mizes  oppression,    Wage  Boards  have  wrought  all  these  evils, 


§  30i]  Personal  Property.  313 

and  their  decisions  might  appear  to  the  superficial  to 
amount  to  nothing  after  all.  But  that  would  be  really 
a  superficial  view:  for  it  is  by  disturbing  "average 
conditions  of  employment" — which  means  the  average 
flow  of  supply  and  demand — that  injustice  is  wrought. 
If  a  court  can  conserve  average  conditions,  it  accom- 
plishes a  great  deal. 

"The  chief  economic  benefit  workers  derive  from  them  [the 
courts]  is  that  they  render  conditions  of  production  sufficiently 
uniform  in  different  establishments  to  keep  unfair  employers 
from  obtaining  a  competitive  advantage  by  oppressing  their 
employees.  Although  the  court's  influence  upon  the  average 
economic  condition  of  the  working  people  may  be  unimportant, 
it  can  effectively  prevent  unwholesome  inequalities  in  their 
condition.   ..." 

Now  he  comes  to  the  fundamental  difficulty  in  all 
arbitration  (268): 

"An  arbitration  law  does  not,  however,  rest 

300,  Only  one  side  equally    upon    employers    and    employees,    be- 
can  pay  damages,     cause  the  former  are  held  to  its  strict  observ- 
ance   by    their    financial    responsibility,    while 

workers  can  evade  many  of  its  provisions.  In  minor  matters, 
the  sanction  behind  the  court's  orders,  so  far  as  it  applies  to 
workmen,  will  alwaj's  remain  to  a  large  extent  a  moral  one. 

"  But  possibly  this  appeal  to  the  honor  and 

301,  But  moral  civic  responsibility  of  the  worker  is  a  more 
effective  adequate  influence  in  favor  of  industrial  peace 

than  harsher  measures.  These  laws  do  appear — 
in  spite  of  the  occasional  defiance  of  their  orders — to  increase 
the  law-abiding  spirit.  The  public  opinion  of  workingmen  sup- 
ports their  observance  as  a  matter  of  principle.  Whether  the 
strike  as  an  instrument  for  enforcing  labor  demands  falls  into 
absolute  disuse  or  not,  this  spirit  is  a  social  gain." 

And  he  repeats  that  the  courts  have  diminished 
strikes  and  sweating  (despite  a  somewhat  inconsistent 
showing  made  earlier  [276  e])  and  child  and  female  labor, 
and  hours  of  work — the  first  two  certainly  a  direct  gain, 
the  last  two,  results  that  attend  the  progress  of  civiliza- 
tion everywhere. 

The  effect  of  the  Minimum  Wage  Boards  on  prices 
(276  g)  is  continued  by  the  Arbitration  Courts,  and 
more  schemes  in  palliation  or  offset  are  arising. 


314  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  302 

302.  Continued  "But   in   time   the   people   who   are   not   em- 

high  prices  and  ployers  or  wage-earners,  especially  the  rural 
palliatives.  population,   may  resent  paying  high  prices  for 

services  and  commodities,  in  order  that  employers  and  employees 
may  enjoy  state-protected  privileges.  A  popular  demand  may 
then  arise  for  more  regulation,  for  some  method  to  protect 
the  rights  of  the  consuming  public — the  farmer,  the  professional 
man,  and  the  person  of  small  property.  This  might  manifest 
itself  first  in  laws  to  control  prices,  already  suggested  [and 
commented  upon  (276/1)],  or  for  the  state  housing  of  citizens — 
cently  inaugurated  as  a  remedy  for  conditions  caused  in  part 
by  arbitration  awards  in  New  Zealand — or  for  the  erection 
of  state  industrial  establishments  to  compete  with  those  reaping 
a  large  profit  under  tariff  protection  and  award  control." 

The  Paris  workshops  again!  tho,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, with  side  issues — state  housing  and  state 
competition  with  monopohes,  which  have  aroused  the 
enthusiasm  of  many  people  who  rejoice  in  old  expe- 
dients with  new  faces — especially  when  they  do  not 
know  them  to  be  old. 

Elsewhere  Dr.  Clark  says: 

''No  error  could  be  more  pernicious  than  to  assume  that 
these  laws  have  fully  justified  themselves  by  economic  and 
social  results.  .  .  .  The  coming  story  of  the  labor  party  will 
be  a  record  of  failure  as  well  as  success.  .  .  .  Nevertheless  it  has 
won  to  its  main  proposals  the  support  of  all  political  parties,  and 
of  the  great  mass  of  the  people.  None  of  the  parties  now  opposes 
compulsory  arbitration  or  old-age  pensions.   ..." 

Perhaps  it  would  have  been  wiser  to  say,  instead 
of  "now  opposes",  yet  opposes.  For  I  have  already 
quoted  passages  abundantly  showing  that  opposition 
is  brewing,  tho  it  has  not  yet  become  strong  enough 
to  appear  in  the  platforms  of  any  party. 

And  now  we  have  reached  a  set  of  considerations 
beginning  to  diverge  from  the  merely  economic: 

303    Courts  con-  "When  an  award  is  under  litigation  workers 

sider  cost  of  living,  often  support  their  claims  by  testimony  as 
and  profits  and  to  house  rent  and  the  cost  of  staple  household 

all  conditions.  articles.      The    principle    of    a    living    zvagc    is 

thcrejore  fully  established  in  arbitration  precedents.  The 
judge  usually  follows  the  theory  that  such  a  wage  is  a  first 


§  3o6]  Personal  Property.  315 

charge  upon  an  industry,  to  be  imposed  if  the  business  is  to 
continue  in  operation.  .  .  .  Dividends  and  other  evidence  of 
the  earning  power  of  a  business  are  admitted  as  having  a  bearing 
upon  an  equitable  wage  for  employees.  The  court  thus  fixes 
the  share  of  the  profits  of  an  industry  which  the  worker  shall 
enjoy.  .  .  .  The  court  has  considered  such  questions  as  the 
speed  at  which  machines  are  to  be  run,  the  number  of  men  to 
be  employed  to  a  machine,  and  whether  men  working  in  the 
open  air,  or  their  employer,  shall  decide  when  it  is  too  wet  to 
labor. 

304.  Startling  dec-  "The  chief  justice  of  New  South  Wales  said 
laration  of  court's  of  the  act :  '  It  deprives  the  employer  of  the  conduct 
powers.  of  liis  oivri  business,  and  vests  the  management  in 
the  tribunal  formed  under  the  Act.'  " 

The  laws  of  two  of  the  states 

305.  Supports  the  "  expressly  state  that  the  court  shall  have  power 
closed  shop — con-  to  give  unionists  preference  of  employment, 
ditionally.  though  this  is  not  mandator}^  In  Western 
Attstralia  a  shnilar  clause  was  defeated  by  the  protracted  oppo- 
sition of  the  upper  house  of  Parliament.  In  the  federal  law 
the  power  is  granted  conditionally,  but  it  is  required  that  the 
union  shall  not  engage  in  political  activity  while  enjoying 
preference,  and  that  this  privilege  shall  be  given  only  when, 
in  the  opinion  of  the  court,  a  majority  of  the  workers  in  the 
occupation  regulated  by  the  award  approve  of  the  claim  for 
preference.  The  court  in  New  Zealand  has  established  its 
right  to  prescribe  that  non-unionist  workmen  already  em- 
ployed when  the  award  goes  into  operation  shall  join  the  union 
as  a  condition  of  retaining  their  positions.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  court  usuall}'  provides  that  the  union  shall  have  preference 
only  so  long  as  it  admits  any  applicant  of  good  character  to 
membership,  upon  payment  of  moderate  fees  fixed  by  the 
cotirt.  .  .  .  The  stronger  organizations  had  enforced  the  closed 
shop  in  Australasia  before  the  court  was  established,  and 
refuse  to  relinquish  what  they  consider  a  vested  right.  They 
further  claim  the  privilege  of  raising  the  issue  in  court,  because 
it  is  a  recognized  issue  in  strikes.  The  men  also  assert  that 
preference  is  just,  because  only  unionists  inctir  the  expense, 
and  the  odium  with  employers,  of  securing  awards,  and  are 
liable  to  penalties  for  breaking  the  awards. 

nnn  c  I'f         "  The  most  important  objection  to  granting 

calandcla^s^effis-   Preference  to  unionists  arises  from  the  organic 
lation  by  courts?       connection  between  the  unions  and  the  political 
labor  party.      Preference  to  unionists  is  prefer- 
ence of  employment  to  members  of  a  political  organization." 

After  learning  all  this,  it   is  startling  to  find  that 


3i6  TJie  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  306 

"  The  proportion  of  the  whole  population  in  such  unions 
varies  from  a  trifle  over  three  per  cent,  in  New  Zealand  to 
nearly  seven  per  cent,  in  Western  Australia." 

And  does  not  all  the  foregoing  mean  class  legislation? 
Dr.  Clark  seems  to  think  it  does: 

"So  at  present  the  government  orders  business  to  be  con- 
ducted according  to  the  -demands  of  particular  classes.  The 
interests  of  classes  rather  than  of  the  public  are  consulted. 

"American  judges  hold  that  the  legislature  cannot  make 
laws  affecting  the  interest  of  a  particular  class — set  apart  from 
the  whole  body  of  citizens.  These  •  decisions  have  prevented 
laws  in  favor  of  or  against  members  of  trade-unions,  and  might 
apply  to  prevent  compulsory  preference  of  employment  even 
to  members  of  a  quasi-public  society  like  an  industrial  union." 

The  Arbitration  Courts  have,  as  already  said,  many 
legislative  privileges : 

"As  a  lawmaker,  the  court  is  the  mark  of  virulent  and  par- 
tisan criticism,  and  its  orders  are  subject  to  the  same  public 
comment  and  discussion  as  other  legislative  or  administrative 
acts,  while  in  its  purely  judicial  capacity  it  receives  the  respect 
usually  shown  to  a  dispenser  of  justice.  ...  In  an  important 
mining  case  ...  a  newspaper  commented  editorially  upon  the 
merits  of  the  issues  involved.  The  paper  was  warned  that  it 
rendered   itself  liable  to  punishment.       .   .   The 

f,?L„S"If tl^i  „,„..   freedom  of  the  press  is  thus   curtailed  by   ap- 
treedom  ottnepresSi     ,.         .  j     -i  ^-       i_j  ^     ^-  j      t^ 

plying   to   a   legislative  body  protective  canons 

of  law  devised  to  procure  uninfluenced  and  unimpeded  channels 

for  the  administration  of  justice. 

"  However,  in  response  to  practical  considerations,  arbitration 

laws  are  evolving  toward  a  separation  of  judicial  and  legislative 

powers.   .   .   .   Breaches    of    awards    are    prosecuted    under    an 

action  of  mixed  civil  and  criminal  character,  and  the  defendant, 

if  convicted,  is  adjudged  to  pay  costs,  and  an  additional  sum 

partaking  of  the  nature  both  of  a  fine   and  of  an   award  of 

damages.     Such  a   'penalty'  is  made  payable  directly  to  the 

plaintiff." 

Dr.  Clark,  it  is  very  important  to  realize,  has  shown 
that  the  effective  administration  of  the  law  seems  to 
require  proceedings  that  attack  what  have  heretofore 
been  considered  the  foundations  of  civilization,  and  that, 
like  the  attempts  to  secure  equal  fortune  to  unequal 
men,   give   an   impression   that   to   justify   such  risks, 


§309]  Personal  Property.  317 

the  advantages  of  compulsory  arbitration  need  to  be 
almost  incalculably  great.  Dr.  Clark  next  gives  still 
more  startling  testimony  to  the  same  effect: 

308.  And  "the  "  Wherever  compulsory  arbitration  is  in  force, 

obligation  of  the  court  finds  it  necessary  to    annul  or  modify 

contracts".  existing  contracts  of   service,  against  the  will  of 

the  parties,  tlio  these  contracts  are  not  in  themselves  illegal. 

"  An  industrial  agreement  is  a  contract  approved  and  sanc- 
tioned by  the  court,  and  might  therefore  be  supposed  to  enjoy 
special  immunity  from  alteration.  In  Western  Australia  the 
court  has  held  that  it  cannot  modify  an  industrial  agreement 
without  the  consent  of  all  the  signatory  parties.  Btit  elsewhere 
the  court  has  amended  these  contracts,  or  substituted  awards  in 
place  of  them.   .   .   ." 

All  this  would  not  be  tolerated  under  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States,  which  does  not  permit  any  state 
legislature  even,  not  to  speak  of  any  court,  to  pass 
a  law  annulling  the  obligation  of  contracts. 

"  Tho  a  legislature  might  declare  certain  classes  of  contracts 
in  the  future  illegal,  no  law  could  be  made  so  sweeping  as  to 
deprive  ail  citizens  of  the  right  of  making  individual  contracts 
of  service,  without  causing  a  revolution  in  otir  [American]  sys- 
tem of  iurispnidence  that  would  encounter  the  veto  of  the 
higher  courts." 

But  Dr.  Clark  has  more  to  say: 

"  Compulsory  arbitration  and  private  cojitract  are  in  the 
widest  sense  contradictory.  Their  mutual  opposition  continu- 
ally creates  new  problems  for  legislators.  .  .  .  These  laws  revive 
the  old  historical  struggle  between  contract  and  status.  They 
reverse  the  process  of  evolution  of  private  rights  in  European 
and  British  law." 

Does  this  mean  simply  a  relapse  toward  barbarism? 
The  reader  new  to  the  question  is  advised  to  read  again 
Chapter  XIII  before  continuing. 

The  attacks  on  Freedom  of  the  Press  and  Freedom 
of  Contract,  are  accompanied  by  another  attack  on  what 
have  been  supposed  to  be  the  bulwarks  of  liberty: 

"  -^^^'^1  unions  have  occasioned  some  of  the 
of  assemblv.    ^^        most  bitterly  contested  issues  under  the   arbi- 
tration laws.     The  bogus  union,  formed  by  a 


3i8  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§309 

small  group  of  employees  disaffected  with  the  existing  organi- 
zation, with  the  connivance  of  .employers,  and  used  to  defeat 
or  hamper  the  operation  of  the  law,  has  been  the  subject  of 
parliamentary  investigations  in  New  South  Wales.  Therefore 
the  state  is  forced,  in  its  increasing  control  over  labor  societies, 
even  to  limit  the  right  of  free  association  among  workingmen. 
.  .  .  The  total  effect  is  to  make  the  condition  of  status  more 
rigid." 

Next  we  come  to  something  perhaps  more  startHng 
still : 

"  The    Australasian    legislator    has    not    been    restricted    in 

enacting  arbitration  laws  by  constitutional  limitations  such  as 

exist  in  the  United  States.   ...   In  most  [of  those]  states  no 

power  exists  to  create  a  tribunal  with  the  right, 

310.  And  trial  without  a  trial  by  jury,  to  punish  misdemeanors, 
^  •'    •''  impose   a   fine  of  nearly   five  thousand  dollars, 

or  even  as  a  last  resort  to  imprison  offenders." 

Is  this  Good-bye  to  trial  by  jury?  Australia  is  pro- 
gressive. But  the  experiment  is  new,  and  conditions 
are  difficult. 

311.  Attacks  on  But  Australasians  did  not  know  where 
S^'Sdita^te"*  ^'"      they  were  going. 

"  The  colonies  did  not  enter  on  this  legislation  with  clear 
foresight  and  purpose.  The  form  and  effect  of  these  experi- 
mental statutes  were  not  pondered  with  the  care  devoted  to  a 
revolutionary  programme.  The  proposer  of  the  New  Zealand 
law  stated  in  the  debates  upon  the  bill,  that  a  vast  majority 
of  the  disputes  coming  before  the  authorities  would  be  settled 
by  conciliation,  without  recourse  to  the  court.  The  function 
of  the  latter  body  was  not  regarded  as  legislative,  but  as  purely 
judicial — or  rather  as  also  conciliatory.  The  purpose  of  the 
law  was  to  bring  men  to  a  voluntary  agreement.  It  was  to 
further,  not  to  annul,  the  principle  of  private  contract.  .  .  . 
The  development  of  this  legislation,  however,  has  been  in 
another  direction.  ... 

"  Workingmen  have  applied  for  nearlv  all  the 

312.  New  conditions,  awards  granted  in  New  Zealand  and  AustraUa. 
unexpected  results,  ^j^^.^  demands,  when  they  file  an  application 
before  the  court,  are  not  guided  by  past  conditions.  .  .  . 
Therefore  the  court  is  obliged  to  make  orders  covering  many 
points  for  which  no  precedents  exist.  .  .  .  Statutory  or  custom- 
ary law  is  not  at  hand  to  guide  its  decisions,  and  so  must  be 


§314]  Personal  Property.  319 

enacted.  But  a  new  body  of  legislation  .  .  .  requires  constant 
amendment  to  correct  the  contradictions  and  omissions  that 
reveal  themselves  in  practice.  The  legislative  activity  of  the 
court  is  consequently  stimulated  from  two  directions,  by  the 
increasing  demands  of  workers  for  better  terms  of  employment, 
and  by  appeals  from  both  parties  to  have  conditions  previously 
imposed  made  more  workable. 

"  The  divergence  between  the  original  theory  and  purpose 
of  industrial  arbitration,  and  its  present  development,  is  over- 
looked or  disregarded.  The  final  effect  of  this  new  institution 
upon  private  law  and  theories  of  government  is  not  considered, 
because  the  popular  attitude  toward  this  legislation  is  oppor- 
0.0   Yet  all  tunist    and     practical.        But    the    labor  party, 

admitted  to  be  i^'hicii  I's  the  most  active  supporter  of  industrial 

progress  toward  arbitration,  fancies  that  it  is  a  step  toward  state 
socialism,  socialism." 

314.  Has  experi-  And  these  steps  toward  state  socialism 

dalism^'aTwaf"'  ^^^  ^vcr  what  a  labor  agitator  in  other 
with  Liberty  and  connections  would  be  apt  to  call  "the 
Progress?  prostrate  bodies"  of  trial  by  jury,  of  free- 

dom of  the  press,  of  right  of  assembly,  and  of  contract; 
and  are  of  course  steps  back  toward  status!  The  conten- 
tion that  state  socialism  and  status  are  synonymous 
terms,  seems  receiving  a  startling  confirmation  from 
experience,  even  before  state  socialism  has  become  mat- 
ter of  experience. 

After  I  first  read,  as  a  whole,  the  foregoing  con- 
densation from  Dr.  Clark's  book,  I  wrote  to  him  that 
I  did  not  before  know  what  a  terrible  indictment  of 
government  control  of  industry  the  book  contains. 
That  the  extracts  turned  out  an  indictment  was  due, 
however,  to  no  will  of  mine.  I  tried  to  be  as  fair  to 
both  sides  as  he  is. 

Either  the  indictment  is  terrible,  or  the  experience  of 
thrice  ten  centuries  through  the  whole  world,  has  been 
shown  to  be  foolishness,  by  ten  years  of  experiment  on 
three  islands  in  the  Pacific.  And  this  remains  true, 
even  if  the  right  of  trial  by  jury  is,  as  many  sober 
thinkers  suspect,  outgrown  in  a  fairly  democratic  state; 
and  even  if  contract,  like  many  other  invaluable  insti- 
tutions, is  capable,  in  abnormal  conditions,  of  working 
injustice.     But  surely  its  abnormal  conditions  should 


320  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§3^4 

never  be  approached  with  a  hand  less  cautious  and 
reverent  than  the  ideal  surgeon's — or  the  ideal  jurist's. 

These  most  weighty  considerations  show  plainly  that 
in  Australasia  the  thunder  is  rumbling.  But  as  yet  no 
bolts  have  fallen;  Dr.  Clark  says: 

315.  No  business  "  The    evidence     does    not    show    a    general 

disasters  yet.  setback    ffom    government    regulation     of    in- 

dustries. The  investment  of  foreign  capital  may  have  been 
checked  by  the  novelty  and  uncertainty  of  this  legislation,  but 
local  capital  has  been  found  to  meet  the  demand  of  growing 
enterprises.  The  impression  the  country  makes  upon  a  visitor 
is  not  that  of  a  land  where  industry  is  paralyzed  and  business 
stagnated,  but  rather  the  reverse.  Permanent  and  costly 
buildings  are  being  erected  in  the  larger  cities,  public  improve- 
ments are  going  forward,  the  wharves  are  crowded  with  shipping, 
the  railway  service  is  fuller  occupied.  .  .  .  There  are  few 
evidences  of  excessive  unemployment.  To  a  person  studying 
conditions  in  Australasia,  the  economic  argument  that  a  country 
will  be  industrially  ruined  by  state  regulation  is  not  convincingly 
demonstrated.  But  this  does  not  prove  or  disprove  the  ad- 
visability of  the  laws  embodying  these  experiments:  for  the 
argument  in  question  is  too  general  to  be  valid.  The  prosperity 
or  depression  of  a  country's  business  rests  upon  a  broader 
basis  than  an  industrial  arbitration  act." 

Yet  our  author  goes  on   to  show  what 
?n  pro^pe^roilTti'mes^  ^^^  been  claimed  before,  that  state  regula- 
tions have  not  yet  been  tried  under   ad- 
verse conditions,  but  have  been  acting  only  in  a  period 
which  other  causes  made  one  of  great  prosperity. 

"  Since  the  passage  of  the  oldest  of  these  laws,  the  Victorian 
Minimum  Wage  Act,  federation  has  been  accomplished,  and  a 
national  tariff  with  free  trade  throughout  the  Commonwealth 
has  been  substituted  for  a  local  tariff  and  free  trade  only  within 
the  borders  of  the  colony.  This  enlarged  market  has  caused  a 
great  expansion  of  manufacturing.  The  exportation  to  other 
states  of  the  federation  of  twenty-four  classes  of  locally  made 
articles  increased  over  one  hundred  and  forty-seven  per  cent, 
during  the  first  two  years  after  the  national  tariff  went  into 
effect.  .  .  .  This  has  stimulated  the  demand  for  factory  opera- 
tives and  raised  wages  in  many  skilled  occupations." 

Yet  one  is  not  surprised  to  learn  that 


§319]  Personal  Property.  321 

317.  Disagreement  "  The  economic  effects  of  government  regula- 
as  to  prospects.  tion  of  industry  are  still  a  matter  of  controversy 
in  Australasia.  .  .  .  The  contention  that  the  capitalist  is 
benefited  by  having  wages  fixed  and  other  conditions  of  em- 
ployment deterinined  by  a  government  authority,  is  some- 
times supported  by  plausible  arguments;  but  it  is  contra- 
dicted by  the  attitude  of  most  employers  toward  these  laws. 
As  a  body,  they  oppose  compulsory-arbitration  and  minimum- 
wage  boards.  .  .  .  Probably  the  influence — good  or  bad — of 
state  regulation  upon  the  prosperity  and  development  of 
industries  has  been  exaggerated.  .  .  .  Indeed  state  regulation 
applies  to  the  industries  that  are  the  main  source  of  national 
incoine  only  to  a  very  limited  extent." 

318.  Increased  But  whatever  may  be  the  gains  or 
fealty  to  Law.  losses  through  the  Austrahan  labor  legis- 
lation, even  if  the  tinkering  and  expensive  bracing  it  is 
already  demanding,  shall  tinker  and  brace  it  into  some- 
thing else,  or  out  of  existence,  one  effect  of  it  should 
be  viewed  in  America  with  special  hope  and  honor: 
for   as  Dr.  Clark  says: 

"It  is  a  law-abiding  agency,  and  the  forces  that  in  other 
countries  threaten  to  disrupt  society,  serve,  in  Australasia,  only 
to  strengthen  social  bonds." 

Yet  this  does  seem  a  little  difficult  to  reconcile  with 
what  he  expressly  asserts  of  class  legislation ;  restriction 
of  freedom  of  the  press,  of  assembly,  and  of  trial  by 
jury;    and  interference  with  contract. 

But  the  dispassionate  doctor's  valedictory  is: 

"But  if  state  regulation  clearly  fails  to  benefit  wage-earners, 
the  country  will  probably  return  to  free  private  adininistration 

319.  The  equilib-  °^  industry.  Tlie  essential  fact  is  that  the  pres- 
rium  unstaoie.         ^^^^  condiiio)i  is  unstable." 

Knowing  the  policy  of  a  set  of  doctors  plainly  not 
of  his  school,  he  adds: 

"The  workers  are  still  confident  that  state  regulation  does 
help  them,  and  will  continue  to  do  so.  Therefore  the  limited 
experience  with  compulsory  arbitration  up  to  the  present,  sug- 
gests the  possibility  of  a  further  development  toward  state 
socialism." 

Like  protective  tariffs,  and  stimulants  and  narcotics — 


322  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  319 

when  the  amount  in  use  is  proved  ineffective,  give  more! 
320.  The  latest  As  these  pages  are  about  to  leave  my 

word.  hand,  there  comes  through  a  correspond- 

ent of  the  London  Times  one  of  those  messages,  ex- 
treme on  one  side  or  the  other  which  constantly  ema- 
nate from  Australasia. 

As  quoted  by  the  New  York  Times,  the  correspond- 
ent makes  out  that 

"Neither  party  is  really  satisfied  with  the  state  of  things 
in  New  Zealand;  both  parties  are,  in  fact,  extremely  dis- 
satisfied. The  Austrahan  Minister  for  Agriculture,  returning 
from  a  visit  to  New  Zealand,  has  reported  that  he  found  the 
Arbitration  Act  '  working  to  great  advantage.'  The  Secretary 
of  the  New  Zealand  Federation  of  Employers  tells  the  cor- 
respondent that  the  employers  do  not  agree  with  this  view. 
The  workmen,  according  to  this  authority,  are  'assailing  the 
employers,  threatening  to  ignore  the  Act  altogether,  and  to 
return  to  their  old  methods;  there  has  never  been  any  greater 
friction  in  labor  matters  than  at  the  present  time.'  From  the 
employers'  point  of  view  the  Act  has  not  made  for  better  work 
or  for  improved  methods,  and  it  has  not  fostered  trade.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  has  seriously  increased  the  cost  of  production. 
This  increase  has  been  such  that  in  those  articles  which  New 
Zealand  might  be  expected  to  export,  such  as  clothing,  woolens, 
timber  and  coal,  she  is  unable  to  take  advantage  of  her  natural 
facilities.  'The  history  of  the  court  has  been  increased  impor- 
tations and  decreased  local  output.'  .  .  .  The  Seainen's  Union 
and  the  Otago  Trades  and  Labor  Council  have  in  turn  de- 
nounced the  court." 

But  despite  frequent  casual  statements 
ru'i  '^^PfT,^^  hke  this,  and  despite  the  deep  shadows 
in  Dr.  Clark's  thorough  and  dispassionate 
study,  we  are  by  no  means  forced  to  the  conviction 
that  the  threatening  aspects  of  government  regulation 
must  lead  to  its  complete  overthrow.  The  dangers  are 
almost  inseparable  from  so  young  an  experience,  and 
there  seems  to  be  no  unescapable  reason  to  fear  that  they 
are  due  to  anything  more  than  the  excesses  of  youth, 
or  that  they  cannot  be  remedied  as  experience  accu- 
mulates. 

As  shown,  most  of  the  decisions  have  been  in  favor 
of  the  men,  because  the  market  has  been  steadily  rising. 
Then  if  the  principle  of  compulsory  arbitration  shall 


§  32  2  a]  Personal  Property.  323 

turn  out  to  be  the  cplossal  blessing  to  mankind  which 
its  friends  claim,  and  which  its  enemies  seem  growing 
less  inclined  to  dispute,  the  fact  that  it  "happened" 
to  be  started  at  the  beginning  of  many  years  of  in- 
creasing prosperity,  will  be  classed  with  such  facts 
as  Rome's  unification  of  the  civilized  world  when 
Christianity  appeared — facts  which,  whether  called 
"Providential"  or  by  any  other  name,  even  the  phi- 
losopher is  tempted  to  accept  as  proofs  of  an  order  and 
beneficence  in  the  universe  wider  than  our  everyday 
conceptions  are  apt  to  rise  to. 

322.  Gains  in  pros-  What  is  to  be  the  effect  of  compulsory 
perity  may  carry  arbitration  on  a  falling  market,  yet  re- 
through  adversity,  ^lains  to  be  ascertained.  But  the  work- 
men have  already  had  the  discipline  of  eleven  law- 
seeking  and  law-abiding  years,  to  educate  them  to 
respect  the  law  when  it  goes  against  them. 

Of  course  the  enthusiasts  are  tempted,  in  face  of 
abundant  other  obvious  causes  for  Australasia's  prog- 
ress during  the  last  decade,  to  attribute  it  too  largely 
to  compulsory  arbitration;  but  it  would  be  a  blind 
opponent  indeed  who  would  give  that  no  place  what- 
ever among  the  favoring  agencies. 

Laborers  everywhere  of  course  expect  that  every  new 
expedient  is  going  to  give  them  much  more  wealth  than 
they  produce,  and  they  resort  to  each  expedient  to  the 
absurd  degree  that  is  already  troubling  the  Australasian 
courts.  But  that,  tho  one  of  the  greatest  of  their 
troubles,  seems  sure  to  remedy  itself. 

Probably  nearly  all  the  excesses  are  due  to  trying 
to  make  the  courts  do  too  much.  But  it  is  far  from 
proved  that  they  can  do  nothing.  To  have  virtually 
abolished  strikes,  and  made  the  labor  world  law-abiding, 
is  to  have  done  a  very  great  deal,  and  a  great  deal 
that  we  in  America  sorely  need.  We  have  already 
indulged  in  a  good  many  futilities  by  way  of  voluntary 
arbitration,  and  a  few  successes,  mainly  in  Massa- 
chusetts. But  for  labor's  own  sake,  we 
mis/cLnffT'^"^''  need  something  stronger.  Despite  the  dem- 
agogues who,  honestly  or  dishonestly,  make 


324  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  322  a 

their  livmg  by  fomenting  Mr.  Gompers's  "fight", 
strikes  will  not  be  tolerated  much  longer  in  America. 
The  intelligence  of  the  industrial  world,  and  the  com- 
mon sense  of  the  world  in  general,  is  but  just  organized 
against  them.  But  the  Citizens'  Associations  wdio  pro- 
pose to  have  regularity  in  their  transit  and  supplies, 
and  freedom  from  riot,  arson  and  murder;  and  the 
Industrial  Associations  who  propose  to  have  Enterprise 
regulate  enterprises,  are  spreading  at  a  rate  beside 
which  the  spread  of  labor  organizations  was  at  snail's 
pace.  Possibly  the  demagogues,  for  the  sake  of  hold- 
ing their  leadership,  may  fight  compulsory  arbitration 
until,  as  once  in  England,  strikes  may  be  abolished  by 
law  without  arbitration  to  fall  back  upon.  But  apparently 
compulsory  arbitration  will  come  sooner  or  later:  it 
is  difficult  not  to  have  faith  that  the  habit  of  seeking 
law,  and  understanding  it,  and  abiding  by  it,  which  the 
labor  world  of  Australasia  is  being  trained  in,  will 
ultimately  save  its  arbitration  courts  from  such  fatal 
excesses  as  now  threaten,  and  make  them  an  example 
that  the  rest  of  the  world  will  be  glad  to  follow  as  fast 
as  institutions  can  be  adapted  to  it. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

PERSONAL    PROPERTY    (CONTINUED). 

Proved  Methods  jar  Diffusing  it  more  Evenly. 

The  coolie  of  China,  the  ryot  of  India, 
323.^Progress  in  ^|-^g  fg^^h  of  Egypt,  the  peasant  of 
Russia,  are  in  a  condition  not  very 
different  from  that  of  virtually  all  mankind  a  few 
thousand  years  ago,  and  that  our  own  ancestors  had 
not  got  very  far  beyond  a  thousand  years  ago.  When 
we  compare  them  with  the  present  population 
of  Japan,  civilized  Europe  and  civilized  America, 
we  realize  that  over  a  large  part  of  the  world,  pow- 
erful agencies  have  long  been  at  work  for  the  bet- 
terment of  man's  estate.  A  little  thought  must  con- 
vince us  too  that  the  betterment  has  been  greater 
among  the  masses  of  mankind  than  among  the  few 
at  the  head.  The  average  man's  condition  is  now 
nearer  that  of  the  exceptional  man,  who  is  forced  to 
respect  his  life,  liberty  and  property,  than  was  the  con- 
dition of  the  feudal  retainer  who  held  all  these  things 
at  the  mercy  of  his  lord.  In  the  essentials  of  a  healthy 
existence — food,  clothing,  shelter,  sanitary  surround- 
ings, hospital  facilities,  education,  the  average  man 
to-day  is  vastly  nearer  the  favored  man  than  he  was 
not  merely  thousands  of  years  ago,  but  centuries  ago — 
yes,  decades  ago.  Since  the  middle  of  the  last  century, 
there  have  rapidly  accumulated  figures  which  prove 
that  even  in  that  comparatively  insignificant  period, 
the  progress  is  not,  as  might  have  been  expected,  corre- 
spondingly insignificant,  but  very  significant  indeed. 

325 


326  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§323 

The  agencies  that  have  thus  been  distributing  the 
good  things  of  Ufe,  are  of  course  innumerable,  and  the 
study  of  them  is  too  recent,  even  could  it  possibly  be 
adequate,  to  reach  a  very  thorough  knowledge  of  them. 
But  we  know  some  of  them  well  enough  to  enable  us 
to  promote  their  efficiency. 

Before  proceeding,  however,  to  such  detailed  con- 
sideration as  we  can  give  them,  it  is  well  worth  while 
to  pay  some  attention  to  the  general  facts  which  prove 
that  there  are  enough  agencies  whose  efficacy  has  been 
proved,  to  render  foolish  all  headlong  confidence  in  the 
untried  quack  stimulants  which  are  constantly  suggested. 

But  first  let  us  realize  that  while  we  would  like  every- 
body to  get  rich  in  a  generation,  there  is  no  way  to 
bring  it  about :  Nature  has  settled  the  matter  in  her 
own  way:  there  is  not  ability  to  produce  enough. 
The  annual  production  of  the  country  averages  less 
than  $250  apiece,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  the  accumulated 
wealth  is  but  about  $1,200  apiece. 
„„,   r,.ff  •      r         A  more  general  diffusion  of  wealth,  then, 

324.'  Diffusion  of  ,  •.      r  ^      ^■^c        •  e 

wealth  depends  on  must  wait  tor  a  more  general  dmusion  of 
diffusion  of  Ability,  ability  to  produce  it.  As  already  said, 
wealth  is  Nature's  prize  to  stimulate  energy,  fore- 
thought, temperance  and  honesty — in  a  word,  Ability. 
Yet  the  man  without  ability  gains  much  from  the 
general  progress  of  invention,  and  General  Walker 
seems  to  claim  *  that  he  gains  it  all  except  a  little  of 
the  inventor's  share;  but  the  doctrine  is  not  generally 
accepted  to  that  degree.  Mr.  Atkinson,  however,  quotes 
Bastiat  with  approval  to  the  effect  that  "in  proportion 
to  the  increased  quantity  and  effectiveness  of  capital, 
the  aggregate  share  of  the  annual  joint  product  of  labor 
and  capital  falling  to  capital,  is  increased  absolutely,  but 
diminished  relatively.  On  the  other  hand,  the  share 
falling  to  labor  is  augmented  both  absolutely  and  rela- 
tively." The  laboring  man  does  plainly  gain  much: 
for  his  cottage  to-day  contains  many  comforts  that  the 
home  of  the  rich  lacked  half  a  century  ago. 

♦  "Political  Economy",  Advanced  Course,  §§  326-36. 


§  325]  Personal  Property.  327 

In  1903  the  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics 
issued  a  bulletin  showing  that  of  45,780  persons  in  the 
state  who  had  retired  from  business  with  a  competency 
for  the  rest  of  their  lives,  1,076  were  laborers.  Yet 
the  world  is  still  divided  up  among  a  small  proportion 
of  rich  and  a  large  proportion  of  not  rich. 

But  the  proportion  is  growing  more 
\eh io^lsF^  favorable  to  the  poor.  When  we  were  dis- 
cussing the  relations  of  labor  and  ability 
(pp.  92-3),  we  took  note  of  Galton's  generalization  that 
most  men  tend  to  be  about  average,  and  that  the  depart- 
ures from  average  tend  to  be  relatively  few.  From  this 
it  is  obvious  that  most  men's  incomes  must  be  about 
the  average — some  $650  a  year  in  America  in  1900, 
and  that  those  who  have  more,  grow  fewer  and  fewer 
as  the  incomes  increase.  Such  is  the  condition  at 
any  given  time,  but  there  is  a  vastly  wider  generaliza- 
tion than  Galton's,  which,  with  the  exception  of  that 
of  evolution,  is  probably  the  most  tremendous  gener- 
alization yet  given  to  the  mind  of  man.  I  refer  to 
Spencer's  Law  of  Equilibration,  which  includes  a 
corollary  that  under  evolution,  averages  have  a  ten- 
dency to  rise,  and,  in  their  progress,  to  include  the 
individuals  of  the  grades  originally  above  them.  Under 
this  principle,  if  the  dots  in  the  supposed  graphic 
representation  suggested  in  the  passage  on  page  93, 
could  rise,  the  lower  ones  would,  according  to  the  law, 
rise  faster  than  the  upper  ones,  and  the  space  occupied 
would  continue  to  become  narrower  until  in  time  all 
the  dots  would  be  concentrated  on  a  line  considerably 
higher  than  the  original  central  horizontal  line  of  the 
system.  This  new  heavy  line  would  represent  all  men 
having  attained  equality  of  ability,  and  consequently 
of  fortune,  and  on  a  higher  plane  than  any  men  occu- 
pied at  the  start.  No  civilization  has  yet  been  long 
enough  to  attain  such  a  result,  and  it  is  vain  to  specu- 
late whether  any  civilization  ever  will  be.  But  the 
evolution  of  each  civilization  has  been  toward  such  a 
result,  tho  it  has  been  reversed  when  the  dissolution 
of  the   civilization   set   in.     If,  then,   a  nation  is   still 


328  The  Protection  oj  Rights.  [§325 

in  the  process  of  evolution,  not  yet  having  entered 
upon  that  of  dissolution — if,  for  instance,  the  United 
States  has  not,  as  many  fear,  lost  the  preponderance 
of  capable  voters  which  started  her  evolution,  and  has 
not  come  under  a  government  of  incapable  ones,  which 
must  initiate  dissolution — if  the  country  is  still  progress- 
ing, it  is  inevitable  that  the  lot  of  average  people  should 
be  improving,  and  that  a  larger  portion  of  the  people 
should  be  included  among  the  average.  For  at  least 
the  fifty  or  sixty  years  for  which  the  statistics  are  of 
account,  they  show  these  conditions  to  have  prevailed; 
and  there  is  enough  general  evidence  from  history,  to 
indicate  them  to  have  prevailed,  on  the  whole,  among 
civilized  peoples,  since  the  dark  ages. 
326.  Diffusion  in-  Not  only  is  the  whole  world  grow- 
cieasing.  j^g   richer,  but    the    wealth   is    becoming 

more  evenly  divided.  The  trade-unions,  despite  their 
frightful  mistakes,  have  undoubtedly  enabled  the 
laborer  to  get  more  of  the  benefit  of  the  laws  of  com- 
petition, as  we  have  seen,  and  they  are  making  him 
more  of  a  thinking  man — in  the  last  decade,  by  making 
him  a  great  deal  more  trouble  to  think  about,  but  at 
the  expense  of  being  more  of  a  discontented  man. 
But  discontent  is  a  good  thing,  rightly  used.  It  is  the 
parent  of  effort. 

While  "rich  richer,  and  poor  poorer" 
anJ"poor'noorer''Ms  ^^as  all  the  authority  of  a  proverb,  the 
not  true  in  civilized  authority  of  a  proverb  is  often  very  poor 

countri8Si  •  -^     i. 

authority.  This  one  simply  illustrates 
how  a  slick  phrase  takes  hold  of  people.  There  is 
probably  no  greater  error  in  economics,  and  yet 
none  more  generally  believed.  The  facts  are  over- 
whelmingly against  it.  In  the  United  States  wages 
have  risen  an  average  of  sixty-eight  per  cent,  since 
i860,  and  have  nearly  doubled  since  1840.  (On  re-read- 
ing, I  find  this  apparently  self -contradictory,  but  take 
the  figures  at,  say,  100,  no,  and  200,  and  it  will  be 
found  more  than  workable.)  Even  as  late  as  1880 
the  census  gives  the  yearly  average  nearly  $100  below 
that  of  1890 — $346.91   as  against  $444.83.     The  com- 


§327]  Personal  Property.  329 

parison  cannot  be  relied  on  as  exact,  but  the  correct- 
ness of  its  general  showing  is  certain. 

Prices  have  not  risen  with  wages.  They  have  gone 
down  some  eight  per  cent,  since  i860.  Leaving  out 
luxuries,  Professor  Mayo-Smith*  says  that  the  "por- 
tion of  family  expenses  directly  affected  by  the  price 
of  commodities  was  as  94.4  in  1891  compared  wdth  100 
in  1880";  and  of  two  hundred  commodities  in  most 
general  use,  Mr.  W.  M.  Grosvenor  has  computed  that 
a  dollar  in  1885  would  buy  a  quarter  more  than  a  dol- 
lar would  buy  in  i860:  and  the  Maine  Bureau  of  In- 
dustrial Statistics  reported  that  in  1887  a  dollar  would 
buy  as  much  of  the  mechanic's  usual  food-supply  as 
$1.20  would  in  '82,  or  $1.30  in  '77.  This  was,  of  course, 
probably  due  to  cheapened  transportation  from  Western 
wheat-fields  and  cattle-ranches. 

In  the  early  years  of  the  twentieth  century,  for  which 
statistics  are  not  yet  available,  strikes  have  made  a 
great  increase  in  nominal  wages,  and  a  great  increase  in 
idleness.  Both  the  wages  and  the  idleness  have  had 
to  be  paid  for  in  a  consequent  increase  of  prices,  but 
this  is  obviously  temporary.  Later  it  will  be  consid- 
ered more  in  detail. 

The  hours  of  labor  average  ten  now;  in  i860  they 
averaged  eleven;   and  in  1840  nearly  eleven  and  a  half. 

The  proof  of  all  these  paradoxes  up  to  1894,  is  given 
in  one  of  the  most  elaborate  economic  investigations 
ever  made.  It  was  carried  on  in  1892  and  1893  by  a 
Committee  of  the  Senate,  whose  reports  of  facts  fill 
half  a  dozen  large  volumes.  This  report  does  not  seem 
to  need  any  backing  up:  for  it  is  a  mass  of  tables 
of  carefully  gathered  facts;  but  it  happens  to  be  thor- 
oughly backed  by  other  investigations  here  and  in 
other  countries. 

Some  of  the  others  here  are  that  wholesale  clothing 
dealers   report   a   great   increase   in   average   size   and 

*  In  "Statistics  and  Economics",  to  which  important  work 
I  am  indebted  for  several  other  points  and  facts  in  this  chapter, 
I  am  glad  to  find  some  of  my  own  previous  conclusions  rein- 
forced by  his  figures. 


330  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§327 

quality  of  clothes  demanded,  which  shows  that  the 
people  are  better  fed  and  exercised  and  better  off.  To 
come  to  reports  of  state  authorities,  in  Massachusetts 
from  '50  to  '80,  agricultural  wages  advanced  fifty-six 
per  cent.;  from  '60  to  '83,  general  wages  advanced 
over  twenty-eight  per  cent.,  and  from  '60  to  '85,  those 
of  mechanics  twenty-five  per  cent.*  In  Connecticut 
from  '60  to'87,  men's  wages  advanced  in  the  principal 
factories  forty-three  per  cent.,  and  women's  fifty-seven, 
while  their  dry  goods  and  carpets  cost  them  more  than 
a  third  less,  but  provisions  about  a  tenth  more.  In 
i860,  a  laborer  on  the  Erie  Canal  got  fifteen  cents  a 
cubic  yard  for  shoveling  dirt;  in  1889,  he  got  fifty 
cents.  From  1831  to  1880,  wages  of  cotton-spinners  in 
the  United  States  increased  eighty  per  cent.,  while  the 
price  of  cotton  cloth  decreased  sixty  per  cent.,  and 
the  average  consumption  per  head  doubled.  More- 
over, pretty  much  everywhere  the  proportion  of  opera- 
tives in  the  comparatively  safe  and  agreeable  and  high- 
paid  processes,  has  greatly  advanced. 

About  1890,  a  Massachusetts  machinist  said,  pub- 
licly, in  speaking  of  the  state  of  affairs  in  1842: 

"The  wages  of  a  machinist  in  shop  were  $1  to  Si. 2 5  a  day: 
one  nabob  of  a  pattern-maker  received  the  great  sum  of  $1.50. 
They  went  to  work  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  worked 
till  7  130  at  night,  with  an  hour  for  breakfast  and  three-quarters 
for  dinner.  It  was  several  years  before  we  obtained  eleven 
hours  a  day.  It  has  now  been  ten  hours  a  day  for  twenty- 
five  years  or  more,  and  we  grumble  at  that,  tho  we  get  more 
than  twice  the  wages  we  did  forty  years  ago ;  and  we  are  hoping 
to  get  the  same  or  higher  pay  for  working  eight  hours.  I  know 
the  condition  of  the  machinist  is  better  than  it  was  when  I 
first  joined  the  guild;  he  has  better  pay,  better  houses,  better 
education,  better  living.  For  my  part,  I  don't  want  any  more 
of  the  good  old  times.  The  present  time  is  the  best  we  have 
ever  had,  tho  I  hope  no  the  best  we  shall  ever  see."  (Quoted 
in  Wells.) 

*  Most  of  the  facts  in  this  and  the  next  two  paragraphs  are 
taken  from  "Recent  Economic  Changes"  by  the  late  David  A. 
Wells — a  book  that  no  one  interested  in  the  general  welfare 
can  afford  to  leave  unread. 


§327]  Personal  Property.  331 

In  Massachusetts  for  the  period  1829-31  the  pro- 
bated estates  under  $5,000  were  85.6  per  cent,  of  the 
whole,  in  the  period  1889-91  they  had  fallen  to  69.5 
of  the  whole,  while  those  over  $50,000  had  risen  from 
13.4  per  cent,  of  the  whole  to  27  per  cent,  of  the  whole. 

In  Great  Britain  from  1840  to  1890,  the  number  of 
estates  subject  to  succession  tax  increased  twice  as  fast 
as  population,  while  the  average  amount  per  estate 
had  not  increased  at  all.  In  an  article  in  the  Royal 
Statistical  Society's  Journal  for  June,  1895,  Mr.  Bow- 
ley  gave  figures  indicating  that  "money  wages  in- 
creased 40  per  cent,  from  i860  to  1891,  and  considering 
the  increased  purchasing  power  of  money,  real  wages  in- 
creased 92  per  cent.  The  eminent  English  authority, 
Mr.  Giffen,*  says  that  during  the  last  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  (that  is,  beginning  earlier  and  continu- 
ing later  than  Mr.  Bowley's  figures),  the  average  of 
wages  in  England  nearly  doubled,  while  the  working 
hours  have  decreased  one-fifth.  When  he  first  stated 
this,  it  was  so  generally  doubted  that  he  repeated  his 
investigations   with   the    same    result. f      Mr.    Mulhall 

*  Giffen,  Robert:  Progress  of  the  Working  Classes  in  the 
Last  Half-century. 

t  Sir  Lowthian  Bell,  Mr.  George  Lord  and  Mr.  James  Caird 
have  given  facts  in  support  of  Mr.  Giffen.      (Wells.) 

Mr.  W.  H.  Mallock,  after  an  elaborate  investigation  in  the 
British  Census  reports,  the  details  of  which  are  given  in  his 
"  Classes  and  Masses",  states  the  following  conclusions:  "  People 
who  are  in  want  of  the  bare  necessities  of  life  ...  if,  whilst 
their  own  povert}^  remains  the  same,  the  riches  of  other  classes 
increase,  do,  in  a  certain  sense,  become  worse  off  relatively.  .  .  . 
But  this  unfortunate  class  .  .  .  has  grown  less  and  less  numer- 
ous relatively  to  the  entire  population."  This  class  "is  not  in 
any  sense  a  sign  or  product  of  our  modem  industrial  sj'stem. 
A  similar  class  existed  before  that  system  .  .  .  and  that  system 
has  relatively  reduced  and  not  increased  its  numbers  .  .  .  and 
the  real  problem  ...  is  not  how  to  interfere  with  the  existing 
economic  tendencies,  but  how  ...  to  bring  the  residuum  under 
their  influence."  "The  poor"  (except  those  who  have  nothing 
at  all)  "are  getting  richer;  the  rich,  on  an  average,  getting 
poorer  .  .  .  and  of  all  classes  in  the  community,  the  middle 
class  is  growing  the  fastest."  Since  1830  the  population  has 
increased  "in  the  proportion  of  27  to  35;    the  increase  of  the 


332  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§327 

said  that  in  England  a  laborer  who  got  two  hundred 
pence  for  a  given  amount  of  work,  from  1821  to  1848, 
got  two  hundred  and  eighty-five  pence  for  the  same 
work  from  1880-83,  while  in  the  later  period  one  hun- 
dred and  seventeen  pence  bought  as  much  grain  as  one 
hundred  and  forty-two  did  in  the  earlier  period.  In 
regard  to  beef,  the  showing  was  still  more  favorable. 
This  cheap  food  was  America's  gift  to  the  mother 
country.  In  181 5  there  were  100,000  paupers  in  Lon- 
don. At  the  rate  of  increase  of  population  in  1875, 
there  should  have  been  300,000.  There  actually  were 
less  than  100,000. 

section  in  question  [the  middle  class]  was  in  the  proportion  of 
27  to  84."  "The  middle  class  has  increased  numerically  in 
the  proportion  of  3  to  10;  the  rich  class  has  increased  only  in 
the  proportion  of  3  to  8." 

"From  1850  to  18S1  the  working  classes  have  increased  by 
about  15  per  cent.,  whilst  the  middle  classes  have  increased  by 
more  than  300  per  cent."  "The  incomes  of  those  with  less 
than  £,(ioo  have  increased  on  the  average  something  like  4 
per  cent.,  .  .  .  while  the  incomes  of  nineteen-twentieths "  of 
those  who  have  over  ;^i,ooo  a  year  "have  decreased  on  an 
average  over  7  per  cent."  "Landed  incomes  have  not  in- 
creased, but  decreased  by  14  per  cent,  in  England,  and  by  13 
per  cent,  in  Scotland."  The  total  income  of  the  millionaires, 
"if  divided  among  the  population  in  equal  shares,  would 
yield  each  inhabitant  a  dividend  of  one  shilling  a  month". 
"The  working  classes  have  increased  in  wealth  far  faster  than 
any  other  class  in  the  community."  "In  1880  the  income  of 
the  working  classes  was  (all  deductions  for  the  increase  of  popu- 
lation being  made)  more  than  equal  to  the  income  of  all  classes 
in  1850."  In  1881  there  were  seven  thousand  windowless 
cabins  occupied  by  families  in  Scotland;  by  1891,  these  had 
"almost  disappeared;  the  one-roomed  dwellings  with  windows 
have  decreased  25  per  cent.;  the  two-roomed  dwellings  have 
increased  by  8  per  cent.,  and  the  three-roomed  and  four- roomed 
dwellings  by  17  per  cent.".  "The  smaller  businesses,  instead 
of  being  crushed  out,  are  increasing  more  rapidly  than  the 
population."  "There  is  an  increase  of  15  per  cent,  in  the  school- 
teachers; .  .  .of  21  per  cent,  in  the  butchers,  which  show? 
the  general  increase  of  meat  consumption;  .  .  .  of  26  per  cent, 
in  the  doctors;  and  ...  of  53  per  cent,  in  the  persons  who 
professionally  minister  to  amusement."  "The  computed 
capital  of  the  Post  Office  Savings  Banks  ...  in  ten  years  has 
very  nearly  doubled  itself." 


§  327  a]  Personal  Property.  37,^ 

In  France  from  '53  to  '83  wages  advanced  some 
sixty  per  cent.,  and  in  the  principal  occupations  of 
women  (outside  of  domestic  service),  they  nearly 
doubled. 

In  Germany,  labor  statistics  are  not  as  easily  within 
our  reach,  but  income-tax  statistics  prove  the  same 
thing.  In  Prussia,  from  1876  to  1888,  Dr.  Soetbeer 
(quoted  by  Professor  Mayo-Smith)  finds  that  the  pro- 
portion of  income-tax  payers  with  their  families,  to 
the  whole  population,  had  increased  about  22  per 
cent.,  that  is  from  2.3  per  cent,  of  the  population 
to  2.8  per  cent.,  and  that  the  classes  which  had  in- 
creased at  the  most  rapid  rate  were  those  with  incomes 
of  over  $500.  And  altho  the  most  rapid  increase  of  all 
had  been  in  the  class  with  incomes  of  over  $25,000,  the 
average  incomes  of  that  class  had  decreased,  thus  show- 
ing both  that  more  people  were  getting  rich,  and  that 
the  rich  were  not  getting  richer. 

One  fact  general  over  all  highly  civilized  countries 
shows  that  the  details  we  have  been  going  over,  must, 
on  the  whole,  be  correct.  It  is  that  the  consumption 
of  food  has  been  increasing  faster  than  population. 
This  cannot  mean  that  the  rich  eat  and  drink  more: 
for  they  ate  and  drank  all  they  wanted  before:  so  it 
must  prove  that  the  proportion  of  those  who  can  eat 
and  drink  freely  is  increasing. 

Most  of  the  foregoing  discussion  of  wages  and  prices 
was  published  in  1901.  Almost  immediately  there- 
after some  strange  conditions  began  to  show  themselves 
in  the  United  States  and  to  increase  until  at  this  writing, 
in  the  spring  of  1907,  they  seem  to  have  passed  their 
culmination. 

The  first  of  them  was  a  run-up  in  prices  of  com- 
modities, following  the  general  inflation  of  industrial 
properties  through  trust  promotions.  This  inflation 
327  (a)  Pendulum  collapscd  in  1903,  but  cotemporaneous  with 
swings  backward  it  there  had  been  a  twofold  inflation  of 
'"        ■  wages — one  resulting  from  the  inflation  of 

prices,  the  other  from  the  greatest  trade-union  activity 
ever  known.     The  unions  had  discovered  a  new  panacea 


334  ^^^^  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  327  a 

in  the  closely  organized  strike,  and  proceeded  to  apply 
it  as  vigorously  as  silver  inflation  or  a  protective  tariff 
or  any  other  panacea  had  ever  been  applied.  Much 
of  the  advance  of  wages  from  this  cause  was  of  course 
purely  nominal — it  was  obtained  through  the  expensive 
idleness  of  the  strikes,  and  followed  by  much  more  idle- 
ness or  unemployment,  because  people  would  not  or 
could  not  pay  the  scale  of  wages  reached.  But  the 
country  being  at  peace,  there  being  no  money-heresies 
in  the  air,  the  tornado  impending  from  the  tariff  being 
as  yet  no  bigger  than  a  man's  hand,  the  crops  being 
good,  and  Europe  wanting  them;  gold  production  being 
large;  the  quadrennial  business  disturbance  of  the 
presidential  election  being  more  nearly  settled  by  a 
foregone  conclusion  than  usual — all  these  influences 
made  the  period  one  of  prosperity  so  great  as  to  encour- 
age the  prosecution  of  the  enterprises  which  had  been 
held  up  by  the  high  prices  of  labor.  This  was  espe- 
cially true  of  house-building,  and  the  various  forms 
of  engineering  construction.  The  accumulation  of  these 
undertakings  has  made  an  exceptional  demand,  for  the 
time  being,  until  at  last  most  of  the  labor  thrust  into 
idleness  by  the  new  prices,  has  been  set  to  work. 

When  this  dammed-up  rush  of  new  enterprises  passes, 
and  San  Francisco  is  rebuilt,  probably  there  will  be  a 
counter-revolution  in  wages,  as,  in  fact,  there  has 
already  been  in  some  trades  where  there  has  been  no 
previously  dammed-up  rush  of  activity,  and,  more  espe- 
cially perhaps,  where  the  employers  have  at  last  met 
organization  with  organization.  But  all  these  excep- 
tional disturbances  may  in  some  particulars  make 
the  preceding  figures  for  the  rise  of  wages  and  fall  of 
prices  during  the  preceding  half  century,  look  insig- 
nificant for  the  moment.  Yet  in  considering  whether 
they  can  still  be  accepted  as  conclusive  indications 
of  the  advance  of  the  general  welfare,  the  exceptional 
and  probably  temporary  character  of  the  remarkable 
fluctuations  of  the  past  five  years  (1901-1906)  should 
be  carefully  borne  in  mind. 

And  yet  in  spite  of  them,  the  United  States  Labor 


§327^2]  Personal  Property.  335 

Bureau  report  for  1906  shows  that  the  average  wage- 
earner  is  working  shorter  hours  than  ever  before,  that 
he  is  receiving  more  pay  for  the  short -hour  week  than 
he  formerly  received  for  the  long-hour  week,  and  that 
the  increase  in  his  average  wage  has  been  so  great 
that  its  purchasing  power  has  risen,  notwithstanding 
the  increase  in  prices  of  many  commodities. 

From  1894  to  1905  the  average  wage  per  hour  in- 
creased 21.5  per  cent.,  while  the  average  hours  worked 
per  week  decreased  3.9  per  cent.  The  average  wage- 
earner,  working  shorter  hours,  earns  12.9  per  cent,  more 
per  week  than  in  1890. 

The  average  price  of  food,  weighted  according  to 
the  average  family  consumption  in  the  families  of  2,567 
workingmen,  increased  9.8  per  cent,  above  1890.  Not- 
withstanding this  increase,  the  average  wage  hour 
would  purchase  in  1895  8.1  per  cent,  more  food  than 
in  1890.  Still  more  important  has  been  the  increase 
in  the  number  employed,  amounting  to  42  per  cent, 
over  1894  and  to  40.9  per  cent,  over  1890.  The  com- 
bined effect  of  the  increase  in  the  average  wage  and 
in  the  number  employed,  was  to  increase  the  total 
amount  paid  in  wages  per  week  by  65.7  per  cent,  above 
1894  and  59.1  per  cent,  above  1890. 

The  total  cost  of  living  shows  a  larger  increase  in  the 
purchasing  power  of  an  hour's  wage  than  is  shown  by 
the  price  of  food  alone,  for  while  there  has  been  a  gen- 
eral advance  in  commodity  prices,  the  average  cost  of 
living  has  not  advanced  in  proportion  to  the  cost  of 
foods. 

Manufacturing  establishments,  especially  the  larger 
concerns,  have  been  able  to  introduce  economies  that 
have  to  some  degree  offset  the  greater  cost  of  labor 
and  materials.  One  of  the  most  important  factors  in 
moderating  the  advance  in  commodity  prices  gener- 
ally has  been  the  decline  in  the  cost  of  transportation— 
a  cost  that  enters  into  the  selling  price  of  practically 
every  commodity.  Tha  average  freight  charge  per 
ton  per  mile  for  1905,  as  reported  by  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission,  shows  a  decrease  of  18.6  per 


S3'^  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  327  a 

cent,  as  compared  with  1890.  The  figures  for  1906,  when 
put  in  shape,  will  show  a  still  further  reduction. 

This  rapid  decline  in  the  average  cost  of  transpor- 
tation has  been  made  possible  by  the  expenditure  of 
hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  for  the  betterment  of 
tracks  and  road-beds,  the  elimination  of  grades  and 
curves,  and  the  purchase  of  more  powerful  engines  and 
larger  cars.  This  work  will  continue  on  an  unpre- 
cedented scale  for  some  years  to  come  if  it  is  not  inter- 
fered with  by  radical  legislation.  But  the  threat  of  it 
is  already  making  trouble.  Yet  the  roads  in  trunk-line 
territory  alone  planned  for  the  expenditure  of  not  less 
than  $400,000,000  in  1906  and  1907,  and  all  over  the 
South  existing  lines  are  being  improved  and  extended. 

Dun's  tables  show  that  the  cost  of  living  per  capita 
in  i860,  before  the  civil  war,  was  $16.87  more  than  in 
1905.  For  the  sixteen  years  1880  to  1895,  inclusive, 
the  average  yearly  cost  was  $101.65.  ^<^^  ^^^^  ^^n  years 
1896  to  1905,  inclusive,  the  average  was  $81.52,  $20.13 
less  than  for  the  earlier  period. 

The  preceding  discussion  has  contained 
llltion  HfhTulI.^'  niany  statements  of  the  decrease  of  hours 
of  labor,  accompanied  by  rise  in  wages. 
It  is  inevitable,  then,  that  the  production  per  hour  has 
increased.  This  is  due  to  improved  management, 
labor-saving  machinery,  and  increase  in  the  ability 
of  the  laborers.  This  latter  has  been  both  a  cause  and 
an  effect:  better  wages  and  better  conditions  of  living 
increase  intelligence  and  working  power.  Of  course  a 
man  working  but  one  hour  a  day  will  produce  very 
little,  and  a  man  working  twenty-four  hours  a  day 
will  soon  produce  nothing.  In  what  number  of  hours, 
day  by  day,  will  he  produce  most?  Experience  seems 
to  indicate  that  in  the  general  run  of  work,  the  happy 
medium  is  about  eight.  And  strange  to  say,  this  seems 
to  be  the  experience  when  the  work  is  merely  tending 
a  machine:  it  will  be  so  much  better  tended  and  kept 
in  so  much  better  order. 

The  question  of  the  eight-hour  da}^  is  an  exceedingly 


§327^']  Personal  Property.  2>2>1 

interesting  one,  and  can  be  studied  to  good  advantage 
in  Mr.  John  Rae's  book  "Eight  Hours  for  Work". 
There  is  no  space  for  its  detailed  discussion  here.  Only- 
Mr.  Rae's  general  conclusions  can  be  given.  He  sup- 
ports them  with  a  great  array  of  facts. 

Of  course  there  is  a  great  difference  in  trades.  There 
are  virtually  none  in  which  a  reduction  from  the  old 
working  day  of  twelve  or  even  fourteen  hours,  has  not 
been  attended  with  increased  production ;  and  of  those 
trades  where  a  farther  reduction  from  ten  hours  to 
eight  has  been  considered  worth  trying,  the  experiment 
has  been  successful  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases. 

The  vigor  of  the  operatives,  their  prompt  attendance, 
their  care  and  attention  in  their  work,  their  care  of 
their  machinery,  their  speed  in  little  repairs  and  in 
shif tings,  have  not  only  generally  kept  up  the  output, 
but  in  a  very  large  proportion  of  cases,  have  actually 
increased  it. 

The  men  have  lost  much  less  time  from  illness,  and 
been  put  to  much  less  expense  for  medicine,  special 
diet  and  physicians'  attendance.  They  have  spent  less 
for  drink  to  overcome  or  solace  their  fatigue,  and  of 
course  have  suffered  less  from  the  consequences  of  drink. 
As  a  result,  crime  has  fallen  off. 

They  have  spent  their  increased  leisure  better  than 
they  did  their  scant  leisure.  Gardening,  gymnastics, 
outdoor  sports  in  their  season,  and  reading  and  attend- 
ance at  schools  and  lectures  in  the  indoor  season,  have 
increased  enormously;  and  with  them  of  course,  book 
clubs,  reading-rooms  and  lyceums.  All  this  has  in- 
creased intelligence,  which  has  increased  production. 
It  is  not  to  be  confused  with  the  misuse  of  sudden 
comparative  wealth,  which  is  spoken  of  elsewhere. 

The  old  fallacy  that  "the  profit  is  in  the  last  hour" 
was  suspected  before  the  shortening  of  hours  was  tried, 
and  when  it  was  examined  into,  statistics  proved  that 
the  last  hour,  so  far  from  being  the  most  profitable, 
was  the  hour  in  which  occurred  most  of  the  expensive 
accidents  to  machinery,  of  the  spoiling  of  material, 
and  of  the  injuries  to  laborers,  not  to  speak  of  most 


338  The  Protection  of  Rights.  '  [§3276 

of  the  expense  of  lighting,  and  a  greater  proportionate 
expense  of  heating  in  the  colder  hours  of  morning  and 
evening. 

Workmen  have  been  increasingly  willing  to  pay  for 
shorter  hours  through  a  reduction  of  wages,  but  the 
rule  has  been  that  even  where  production  fell  off  before 
things  were  adapted  to  the  new  conditions  (which  it 
by  no  means  always  did),  as  soon  as  the  adaptations 
were  effected,  rising  production  increased  wages  until 
in  time  they  have  in  many  cases,  probably  in  most, 
become  higher  than  before  the  reduction  of  hours. 

Foremen  and  the  enterprisers  themselves  have 
abundantly  testified  that — perhaps  most  important  of 
all — their  own  efficiency  and  the  ease  and  effectiveness 
of  handling  their  men,  have  benefited  as  much  as  the 
efficiency  of  the  men. 

One  good  result  expected  from  the  change  has  not 
been  reahzed,  but  that  very  fact  is  a  virtual  demon- 
stration that  the  change  has  not  diminished  produc- 
tion. It  was  expected  by  many  that  the  hours  taken 
from  production  would  have  to  be  restored  by  taking 
in  a  corresponding  number  of  the  unemployed.  Many 
computations  were  published  which  proved  to  the  sat- 
isfaction of  those  who  made  them,  that  unemployment 
of  the  willing  would  virtually  cease.  The  expectation — 
unfortunately  from  one  standpoint — has  not  been 
realized;  but — fortunately  for  the  proof  that  reducing 
hours  has  not  reduced  production — the  proportion  of 
the  unemployed  has  remained  about  as  before. 

The  skeptical  reader  is  urged  to  study  the  facts  on 
which  all  these  generalizations  rest.  Mr.  Rae  speaks  of 
a  book  on  the  subject  by  Mr.  Sidney  Webb  and  Mr. 
Horace  Cox.  I  have  not  considered  it  necessary  to 
consult  it,  as  it  is  said,  on  the  whole,  to  support  Mr.  Rae. 

He  also  quotes  an  opinion  of  Mr.  Jevons  that  the 
reduced  hours  are  simply  a  result  of  the  increased 
prosperity  of  the  working  classes — that  they  work  less 
time  because  they  can  afford  to.  This  factor  must 
undoubtedly  enter  into  the  case,  but  one  reason  they 
can  afford  to  work  fewer  hours  is  that  they  can  do 


§  328]  Personal  Property.  339 

as  much  or  more  in  the  fewer  hours,  and  their  increased 
prosperity  enters  but  very  indirectly  into  their  better 
care  of  their  machinery  and  their  own  persons,  and  the 
improved  use  they  make  of  their  leisure  time. 

I  find  a  report  worth  mentioning,  tho  I  am  unable  to 
give  the  authority,  that  among  the  cigarmakers  51  per 
cent,  died  of  tuberculosis  prior  to  the  inauguration  of 
the  eight-hour  work-day.  Seventeen  years  after  the 
eight-hour  day  took  effect  this  percentage  had  been 
reduced  to  23  per  cent. 

An  instance  much  later  than  those  given  by  Mr.  Rae 
has  just  come  from  the  Austrian  coal  and  lignite  mines. 
In  1902,  the  daily  working  hours  there  were  reduced 
from  twelve  to  nine.  In  1904,  the  average  production 
per  man  per  shift  was  higher  than  in  1901,  by  6.6  per 
cent,  in  the  coal  mines,  and  by  9.9  per  cent,  in  the  lig- 
nite mines. 

328.  Increase  in  ^^  ™^y  ^'^^^  ^^  askcd  if,  until  the  recent 

wages  and  decrease  brief  and  exceptional  period  in  America, 

in  other  prices  come        ■  .-,  ,  \  ,   ^         •  •  -j 

largely  from  prices  the  world  over  not  havmg  risen,  and 
Capital's  share,  g^j|^  wages  having  risen,  and  the  laborers 
having  worked  less  time,  where  the  increase  has  come 
from.  Much  of  it  has  come  out  of  Capital's  share  of 
product.  The  census  reports  of  1880  to  1890  show  that 
during  the  decade,  the  amount  of  wages  paid  in  the 
country  increased  131  per  cent.,  while  capital  increased 
but  121  per  cent.,  and  value  of  product  but  69  per  cent. 
In  England  Sir  Robert  Giffen  computes  that  from  1843 
to  1882  capital  increased  no  per  cent.,  and  wages  145 
per  cent.  Fifty  years  ago,  yes,  thirty  years  ago,  capi- 
tal in  New  York  itself  brought  seven  per  cent.,  now  it 
hardly  brings  four.  In  many  of  the  Western  states,  it 
brought  ten  or  fifteen,  where  now  it  brings  six  or  seven. 
A  similar  reduction  has  taken  place  through  the  civilized 
world.  This  falling  off  of  from  a  third  to  a  half  in 
capital's  share,  contributes  largely  to  the  increase  in 
wages.  True,  the  exceptional  business  activity  in  1 904-6 
has  increased  the  demand  for  capital,  but  this  cannot  be 
considered  permanent :  the  very  cause  of  it  is  increasing 


340  ^^^'^  Protection  of  Rights.  [§328 

capital  at  a  rate  that  must  lower  interest  as  soon  as, 
in  the  rhythmic  course  of  things,  the  wave  of  activity 
passes. 

329  and  from  La-        Ability    benefits    by    reduction    of    the 
bor's  increased        interest  rate,  and  in  it  must  be  included 
' '  ^'  the  increased  ability  of  the  laborers.     Their 

increased  wages  have  come  from  increased  productive 
power,  in  ingenuity,  carefulness  and  steadiness.  The 
enterprisers  have  been  bidding  for  improved  labor  as 
fast  as  labor  would  improve  itself;  and  the  best  enter- 
prisers bid  highest.  Of  course  the  less  they  must  pay 
for  the  use  of  capital,  the  higher  they  can  bid. 

But  of  course  a  great  deal  of  the  improvement  is 
due  to  the  abilitv  of  the  enterprisers  and  inventors. 
Processes  are  greatly  improved,  and  so  are  transpor- 
tation and  organization.  In  1890,  transportation  alone 
cost,  per  unit,  in  America  but  about  a  third  of  what 
it  did  even  so  lately  as  i860,  and,  moreover,  forests  and 
mines  and  productive  arable  land  have  been  opened 
much  faster  than  population  has  increased.  Regarding 
the  share  the  enterpriser  gets,  Professor  Mayo-Smith 
thus  summed  up  the  evidence  of  the  statistics :  "There  is 
scarcely  any  doubt  that  it  is  falling.  Production  on  a 
large  scale,  enormous  investments  of  fixed  capital,  and 
increased  competition,  compel  the  entrepreneur  to  put 
up  with  a  smaller  reward."  Since  1873  "the  laborer 
has  conserved  or  improved  his  position  by  the  main- 
tenance of,  or  even  advance  in,  wages;  the  landowner, 
has  lost  by  falling  rents ;  interest  has  fallen ;  and  profits 
have  been  reduced  to  a  narrower  margin".  Later 
he  says:  "This  progress  has  been  due  primarily  to  the 
abundance  of  capital,  which,  on  the  whole,  works  for 
the  benefit  of  the  laboring  classes  in  two  directions — 
by  competing  for  labor-force  and  thus  raising  wages, 
and  by  cheapening  products  and  thus  making  wages 
go  further." 

The    trade-unions    have    helped   raise   wages   so   far 
as  they  have  increased  the  laborer's  ability,  and  that 


§  ^^o]  Personal  Property.  341 

is  very  far.  But  so  far  as  they  have  interfered  with 
the  Right  to  Work,  and  encouraged  the  various  forms 
of  scamping,  of  course  they  have  diminished  produc- 
tion, and,  inevitably,  retarded  the  advance  of  wages: 
for  wages  have  got  to  come  out  of  production. 

Probably  the  men  who  get  their  living  out  of  the 
unions,  would  insist  that  the  unions  had  secured  for 
Labor  a  large  portion  of  product  to  which  it  was  justly 
entitled,  and  which,  before  the  unions,  it  did  not  get; 
and  on  the  other  hand,  probably  many  men  who  have 
suffered  from  the  unions'  mistakes,  would  say  the  unions 
had  wasted  more  than  they  had  secured.  Both  ex- 
tremes would  be  wrong.  The  unions  have  unquestion- 
ably done  something,  tho  the  decrease  of  interest  on 
capital,  and  the  increase  of  ability  in  inventors,  enter- 
prisers and  the  laborers  themselves,  has  plainly  done 
so  very  much  that  it  is  absurd  to  claim  that  the  unions 
have  done  the  lion's  share.  Moreover,  when  we  see 
that  the  establishments  that  make  most  money  usually 
pay  the  highest  wages,  it  becomes  plain  that  the  com- 
petition of  enterprisers  for  the  best  labor,  must,  inde- 
pendently of  the  unions'  influence,  have  brought  wages 
nearly,  if  not  quite,  as  high  as  the  enterprisers  can 
afford  to  pay. 

Certainly  the  evidence  we  have  been  going  over, 
proves  that  there  is  some  better  way  to  diffuse  the 
good  things  of  this  life,  than  to  reduce  their  production 
by  communism,  socialism  or  scamping. 

We  saw  the  bad  effects  of  scamped 
fi?s?on^of  Hon^t^'f"  work  on  the  laborers  themselves  (228  a-c), 
tho  they  seldom  suspect  it.  The  dis- 
appearance of  scamped  work  alone  would  make  an 
enormous  difference  in  what  the  wages  would  buy. 
Moreover,  the  mistakes  of  the  unions  cannot  forever 
overcome  the  economic  laws  which  entitle  an  honest 
workman  to  better  wages  than  a  dishonest  one,  just 
as  an  honest  merchant  gets  better  credit  than  a  dis- 
honest one.  People  are  occasionally  much  impressed 
when  a  dishonest  man  succeeds,  and  think  dishonesty 
apt  to  succeed;    but  when  an  honest  man  succeeds,  it 


342  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  330 

is  so  much  a  matter  of  course  that  people  do  not  notice 
it.  There  is  much  reasoning  of  that  kind:  people  are 
often  so  much  impressed  by  what  is  unusual,  and  so 
little  impressed  by  what  is  usual,  that  they  constantly 
overrate  the  frequency  of  the  unusual,  and  underrate 
the  frequency  of  the  usual — the  very  fact  that  a  thing 
is  rare,  makes  them  believe  that  it  is  frequent,  and 
vice  versa.  In  spite,  then,  of  an  occasional  rich  rascal, 
there  seems  reasonable  ground  for  belief  that  most  men 
who  get  rich,  get  rich  honestly:  the  criminal  classes  are 
certainly  not  the  rich  ones. 

which  '^^^^   cheapness   of   goods  is   very  much 

makes  everybody's  affcctcd  by  the  chcapuess  of  getting  them 
nwney  go  farther,   ^^    ^^^^    cousumer,    and    that    is   affccted 

by  the  honesty  of  all  dealers  who  handle  them,  as  well 
as  of  everybody  engaged  in  transportation — cartmen, 
railroad  people  and  steamboat  people.  And  strange 
as  it  may  at  first  appear,  the  cheapness  of  goods  is 
affected  by  the  honesty  of  people  who  never  see 
them  at  all.  The  rates  at  which  the  farmers  and  miners 
and  manufacturers  can  produce,  and  the  railroads  carry, 
and  the  merchants  exchange,  are  all  affected  by  the 
cheapness  with  which  their  banking  business  can  be 
done,  and  the  stocks  of  the  companies  dealt  in;  and 
that  cheapness  is  of  course  affected  by  the  honesty  of 
the  bankers  and  stock-brokers  and  their  employees. 
In  the  great  business  of  Wall  Street,  in  many  classes  of 
transactions  easy  to  recollect,  the  brokers  rely  on  each 
other's  mere  word  for  millions,  and  so  the  great  expense 
of  time  and  money  for  written  contracts  is  saved.  In 
banks,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  signatures  of  checks  are 
not  examined  very  much:  to  examine  them  closely,  the 
expense  for  officials  would  have  to  be  doubled.  Obvi- 
ously, then,  a  bank  or  a  stock  exchange  could  not  have 
been  run  as  cheaply  as  it  is  now,  in  the  days  of  thieving 
Sparta,  or  even  in  those  of  Shylock;  in  fact,  in  less 
honest  times,  modern  industries  simply  could  not  have 
been  run  at  all :  with  less  honesty,  the  enormous  com- 
plexity and  rapidity  of  modern  exchange  was  simply 
impossible.     Even  outside  the  producing,   exchanging 


§33i]  Personal  Property.  343 

and  banking  world,  the  cheapness  of  goods  is  affected 
by  everybody's  honesty:  the  producers,  exchangers  and 
bankers  have  got  to  depend  on  engineers  and  architects, 
lawyers  and  doctors,  and  if  those  men  must  be  paid  for 
dishonest  work  in  addition  to  real  work,  the  expense  of 
it  must  find  its  way  back  to  the  commodities  and 
services  that  everybody  uses.  In  fact,  the  whole 
working  world  is  so  bound  together  that  where  an}^  part 
of  it  goes  wrong,  all  the  rest  has  got  to  share  the  expense. 
There  is  still  another  portion  of  the  community  whose 
honest}^  affects  the  price  of  ever}i;hing  that  everybody 
uses.  The  honesty  of  the  government  is  important  to  us 
330  (b).  especially  everywhere.     Every   taxpayer    must    not 

honesty  in  Govern-         .    ■'  ,   .  ,.  .      !:      -^         r      n       m    •    -i 

ment,  Only  pay  his  own  direct  share  01  all  omcial 

thievery  and  carelessness,  but  even  those  who  do  not 
realize  that  they  are  taxpayers,  must  pay  in  rent,  and  in 
what  are  called  indirect  taxes,  which  are  levied  on  many 
goods  in  the  hands  of  manufacturers,  importers  and 
wholesalers  and  added  to  the  price  when  they  reach  the 
retailer. 

„„,      ,  r  Next    to    increased    honesty,    the    most 

i6\,  and  trom  .        ,  ,  .         ^.  -^      .'  ,   -      . 

creating  and  suo-  noticeable  agency  m  dittusmg  wealth  is 
plying  new  wants,  increased  Variety  of  production.  Tele- 
phones, bicycles,  automobiles,  electric  lighting  and 
electric  railways,  and  the  hosts  of  other  new  things  mean 
constant  new  demand  for  labor,  resulting  higher  wages, 
and  at  the  same  time,  new  facilities  of  exchange  or 
production,  with  resulting  variety  and  cheapness  of 
product.  Fortunately,  man  is  a  creature — the  only 
one  we  know — of  constantly  increasing  wants.  Those 
who  have  money  to  pay  out  are  always  more  ready  to 
pay  it  for  labor  on  new  things,  than  for  superfluous  or 
wasted  labor  on  old  ones :  so  there  is  no  need  of  indus- 
trial suicide  by  scamping. 

This  labor  for  the  nev/  things  of  course  comes  out  of 
more  wearing  and  disagreeable  pursuits  (327,  end  of  note 
from  Mallock) .  *     But  as  there  would  be  no  such  pursuits 

*  According  to  the  United  States  census,  from  1880  to  1896, 
those  in  the  laborious  pursuits  of  agriculture  and  the  laborious 
and  dangerous  ones  of  niinin^^  and  fisheries, had  decreased  from 


344  T^^^  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  33^^ 

unless  the  demand  for  them  were  very  strong^  they  must 
have  been  kept  going  when  labor  has  left  them ;  that  has 
been  possible  by  labor-saving  machinery.  Of  course, 
331  (a)  mainiu  ^^  labor  leaves  the  disagreeable  pursuits  for 
through  labor-       more  attractive  ones,  the  deserted  pursuits 

sauing  machinery,  iiji_ixii_  i-  j 

call  doubly  for  labor-savmg  machmery,  and 
are  doubly  ready  to  reward  the  inventor.  Farming,  for 
instance,  tho  healthful,  is  lonely  and  laborious.  Within 
a  generation  or  two,  .inventors  have  given  the  farm 
machinery  that  has  released  a  large  part  of  the  farm- 
hand labor  and  sent  it  into  the  towns.  The  labor  thus 
released  has  done  more  than  merely  find  employment 
without  slowing  up  the  earlier  kinds  of  labor.  It  has 
made  so  many  new  things  that  it  has  kept  the  other 
mechanics  on  the  jump  to  make  enough  old  ones  to 
exchange  for  them.  That  is  to  say,  the  desire  for  new 
things — telephones,  bicycles,  automobiles,  mechanical 
piano-players,  talking-machines,  has  made  people  work 
all  the  harder  to  buy  them. 

But  machinery  often  releases  labor,  and  still  increases 
supply.  The  world  easily  gets  fitted  to  the  increase  of 
supply,  because  competition  to  sell  the  increased  supply 
lowers  prices  so  much  that  people  soon  use  more  goods 
of  the  same  kind,  or  save  enough  money  because  of  their 
lowered  price,  to  use  more  goods  of  other  kinds. 

But ,  it  may  be  asked :  How  does  all  this  ' '  make  work ' ' 
and  do  away  with  reason  for  scamping?  Is  it  not  as 
broad  as  it  is  long — new  things  call  for  labor,  labor-sav- 
ing machinery  releases  it,  and  the  amount  of  employment 
is  just  the  same  as  before.'*  The  answer  is  that  in  most 
cases,  labor-saving  machinery  cheapens  goods  so  that 
several  people  can  buy,  where  one  could  before;  and 
this  increases  demand  for  the  old  goods,  so  that  makers 
of  them  soon  want  back  some  of  their  old  laborers  whom 

46  per  cent,  of  the  whole  number  of  persons  laboring,  to  39.6 
per  cent.  In  domestic  and  personal  service,  there  had  been  a 
decrease  from  20.1  to  19.2  per  cent.  While  in  the  more  desirable 
pursuits,  professional  service  had  increased  from  3.5  per  cent. 
to  4.2;  in  trade  and  transportation,  from  10.7  to  14.6;  and 
in  manufacturing  and  mechanical  industries,  from  19.6  to  22.4. 


§  331  c]  Personal  Property.  345 

machinery    discharged,  and  often  more   laborers  still. 
^^,  ,^,     ^.  ^  Yet    while    the    introduction    of    labor- 

331  (b).  which,  .  1.1  i_ 

tho  of  some  harm  savmg  machinery  has  always  been  a 
at  the  outset.  blessing  to  Workmen  so  far  as  they  w^ere 
consumers,  in  the  early  days  of  "the  great  in- 
dustry" introduced  by  steam,  it  threw  so  many  out 
of  employment  that  they  had  very  little  to  consume. 
Steam-power  did  not  directly  lead  to  the  change. 
More  directly  it  was  due  to  inventions  like  Arkwright's 
loom,  Whitney's  cotton-gin,  and  Stephenson's  locomo- 
tive. But  they  could  come  only  after  other  men  of  great 
ability  had  provided  the  steam-power.  But  however 
the  great  industry  came,  it  suddenly  produced  so  many 
more  goods  with  so  much  less  labor,  that  great  numbers 
of  people  were  thrown  out  of  employment  until  the  world 
got  fitted  to  the  new  state  of  affairs.  Not  only  was  time 
needed  for  invention  to  supply  new  occupations,  but 
there  was  scant  communication  and  travel  to  get  labor- 
ers new  places:  so  the  distress  was  very  great.  Many 
people  thought  that  inventions  were  a  curse ;  and  work- 
men, and  even  sentimental  philanthropists,  often  de- 
stroyed machinery. 

The  effect  of  these  circumstances  was  that  for  a  time 
the  poor  were  getting  poorer  from  lack  of  employment, 
and  the  rich  richer  from  the  profits  of  the  machines. 
This  started  the  cry  of  "the  poor  poorer,  and  the  rich 
richer"  which  became  one  of  the  stock  expressions  of 
Marx,  Lassalle  and  their  school,  and  is  echoed,  despite 
all  new  facts,  to  this  day. 

The  old  facts  were  even  so  bad  that  Marx  promulgated 
an  alleged  "bronze"  (generally  quoted  as  "iron")  law, 
that  wages  will  always  be  the  lowest  on  which  wage- 
earners  can  subsist — a  law  often  quoted  by  agitators 
to-day,  and  approved  by  audiences  with  money  in  the 
savings-banks. 

But    in    the    modern    world,    increased 
domof  dnj'nlw^''  Communication  and  travel  enable  labor  to 
circulate  freely  in  search  of  new  employ- 
ment when  machinery  disturbs  old  employment,   and 


346  The  Protection  of  Rights.  {l  iZ'^  ^ 

workmen  are  not  now  opposed  to  machinery  as  generally 
or  as  bitterly  as  they  once  were.  Many  of  them  more  or 
less  clearly  realize  three  things,  especially  the  first— that 
a  cheapening  of  most  things  increases  demand  so  much 
that  often  as  many  producers  are  needed  with  machines 
as  without  them ;  second,  that  even  if  that  does  not  turn 
out  to  be  the  case,  the  discharged  people  are  apt  to 
get  work  in  making  some  new  product  or  cheapening 
some  old  one;  and  third  (tho  it  is  realized  more  faintly 
than  the  rest)  that  the  laborers  themselves  enjoy  the 
cheapening  of  product,  just  as.  the  rest  of  the  com- 
munity does. 

So  much  for  what  the  general  progress  of  the  world, 
outside  of  the  man  himself,  can  do  for  him.  But  even 
now,  things  do  not  always  adjust  themselves  promptly 
enough  to  save  the  poor  man  the  choice  between  getting 
nothing  at  all,  and  getting  half  what  he  produces.  His 
only  protection  against  being  forced  to  take  what  he 
can  get,  is  not  to  be  poor;  and  he  can  help  being  poor 
by  putting  away  something  whenever  he 
wealth^ hTmsetr"'^^^  ^^^  Spare  it.  Then  he  or  his  union  can 
,   ^         say  to  anybody  who  wants  to   hire:     "If 

332  (a),  by  fore-  ■  >/       •  1      ^  11  j 

haniedmss  you  won  t  give  what  wc  really  produce, 

tfmesf ''^'^'^  we  won't  work  at  all,  and  you  won't  have 

any  chance  to  make  profits."  Yet  a  man 
would  better  take  a  little  less  in  bad  times,  than  go 
unemployed,  especially  as,  in  one  sense,  he  cannot  pro- 
duce as  much  in  bad  times  as  in  good.  Of  course  a 
cloth-mill  can  run  out  just  as  many  yards  of  cloth  in 
bad  times  as  in  good,  but  it  will  not  have  the  chance 
to  run  out  as  many,  because  most  things  will  not  sell 
for  as  much,  and  some  will  not  sell  at  all. 

At  first  it  looks  as  if  it  should  make  no  difference  to 
a  man  if  his  own  product  falls  in  price  when  other  things 

332  (b).  in  which  ^^^^  ^OO'  ^•^'^  ^^^^-^  i^  he  Only  gets  one  dollar 
prices  of  necessi-    where  he  uscd  to  get    two,  but   can  buy 

tl6S  tCtJCi   to  n66P  . 

up,  while  timse  of   twice  as  mucli  with  that  dollar,  he  is  just 

luxuries  fall.  ^g   ^^g||   ^q         g^^   ^^^^^   ^^.j^gg    £^j^   ^^   ^^^ 

times,  they  do  not  all  fall  together.     When  people  have 


§  332  <^]  Personal  Property.  347 

to  economize,  they  cut  off  the  things  they  can  easiest 
do  without :  so  prices  of  those  things  fall ;  but  the  prices 
of  things  a  man  'tnust  have,  keep  up  pretty  well,  and  for 
them  he  must  pay  two  dollars  where  he  paid  two  before, 
even  if  he  gets  but  one  dollar  for  the  sort  of  things  he 
produces  himself.  Now  those  things  that  a  man  can 

do  without,  are  a  larger  portion  of  what  is  produced, 
than  generally  realized.  Civilization  consists  almost  en- 
tirely in  things  (and  thoughts)  that  a  man  can  do  with- 
out. The  savage  has  all  that  a  man  must  have.  Even 
take  tobacco  and  whiskey — not  that  they  are  civiliza- 
tion, but  they  are  things  that  people  can  do  without, 
and  yet  they  cost  the  country  more  than  bread  and 
meat  put  together.  So,  plainly,  there  must  be  other 
things  that  people  give  up  easier  than  tobacco  and 
alcohol.  For  instance,  people  can  generally  be  com- 
fortable for  a  time  without  new  clothes  or  new  furniture, 
or  repairing  and  painting,  or  giving  parties. 

When  business  is  slow,  as  it  is  in  luxuries  in  hard 
times,  people  compete  for  customers  by  lowering  prices, 
and  when  times  are  good,  people  want  so  many  more 
things,  that  the  supply  is  apt  to  be  a  little  short,  and 
they  compete  for  them  by  bidding  higher  prices. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  great  and  terrible  question: 
What  can  he  who  has  not  the  ability  to  produce  much, 
do  for  himself? 

332  (c).  By  ciiiti-  The  first  step  toward  a  reasonable  answer 
vating  Ability.  jg  ^q  realize  that  the  question  is  partly 
one  between  him  and  the  God  who  made  him  as  he  is; 
and  it  is  also  partly  a  question  between  him  and  him- 
self: for  unless  a  man  is  an  idiot,  he  can  do  something 
to  cultivate  ability.  Ability  consists  largely  in  knowl- 
edge, foresight,  self-control  and  energy — a  man  can  edu- 
cate himself,  think  ahead,  fight  laziness,  and  control 
all  desires  that  tempt  him  to  seek  a  small  present  enjoy- 
ment at  the  expense  of  a  greater  future  one.  All  this 
covers  taking  care  of  his  health :  for  if  he  educates  him- 
self in  the  most  necessary  knowledge — that  of  his  own 
body,  and  does  not  sacrifice  the  future  to  the  tempta- 


348  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  332  c 

tions  of  the  present,  and  is  not  lazy,  he  does  take  care 
of  his  health.  There  is  not  much  danger  from  over- 
work; but  there  is  much  danger  from  overworry  under 
the  name  of  overwork. 

333.  Poverty  sei-  ^s  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  next  to  im- 
dom  blameless,  possible  to  find  a  man  suffering  from 
poverty,  if  he  is  educated,  forehanded,  self-denying 
and  energetic.  It  is  only  in  cases  of  very  exceptional 
misfortune,  that  distressful  poverty  is  not  a  man's  own 
fault. 

But  people  want  something  more  than  to  be  merely 
above  distressful  poverty.  And  there  is  hope  of  a 
man  born  poor,  cultivating  so  much  ability  that  he  can 
make  himself  very  comfortable  indeed.     Most  of  the 

rich  men  were  born  poor.*  Of  course  it  is 
m^en' borrf  poor'        hard  to  tell  how  much  of  their  ability  was 

born  in  them,  and  how  much  cultivated, 
but  it  is  certain  that  more  of  their  spare  time  went  into 
studying  their  work  instead  of  playing,  and  that  more 
of  their  early  sixpences  went  into  the  savings-bank 
instead  of  the  beer-pot  than  was  the  case  with  most  of 
the  men  who  did  not  rise.  This  is  by  no  means  counsel- 
ing that  nobody  should  have  any  recreation  while  he  is 

young  and  poor.     But  the  best  recreations 

depen&onTealth.  do  ^°*  ^^^'^  much  money;  books,  music, 
swims,  and  walks  in  the  parks  and  fields 
and  under  the  stars,  are  within  everybody's  reach,  if 
they  only  would  cultivate  a  taste  for  them.  One  should 
consider  not  his  youth  alone,  but  his  whole  life — how  he 
will  have  the  best  time  by  and  large.     In  youtli,  the 


*  Mr.  Walker  (loi  and  227,  notes)  found  that  in  '78  there  were 
one  hundred  and  seventy-six  men  conducting  ten  leading  kinds 
of  manufacture  in  Worcester,  and  only  fifteen  of  them  were  the 
sons  of  manufacturers,  and  all  but  the  fifteen  began  as  journey- 
men.     (Condensed  from  Wells.) 

The  author  once  got  a  city  audience  of  workmen  to  announce 
what  proportion  of  their  employers  began  as  journeymen. 
Nearly  all  did  Tho  such  facts  are  too  generally  known  to 
require  proof,  they  are  not  taken  into  account  by  those  who 
argue  "rich  richer,  and  poor  poorer". 


§  ^^6]  Personal  Property.  349 

wiser  men  have  invested  work  and  study  and  savings 
which  have  brought  them  compound  interest  later ;  while 
those  who  have  indulged  themselves  unduly  while  young, 
had  no  rewards  to  reap  later,  unless  sickness  and  poverty 
are  rewards. 

336.  Wise  phiian-  Nothing  Can  answer  the  purpose  of  a 
throp>  necessary  more  general  diffusion  of  ability  and 
to  civilization.  honesty,  not  even  a  more  general  diffusion 
of  human  charity:  because  Nature's  law  is  that  a  man, 
to  accomplish  anything,  must  take  care  of  himself. 
But  charity  can  help  if  it  takes  the  right  directions, 
while  it  must  hinder  if  it  takes  the  wrong  ones.  The 
wrong  ones  are  indiscriminate  giving  to  those  who 
would  consume  without  producing,  as  the  Communists 
and  Socialists  propose.  The  right  ones  are  giving  in 
directions  that  tetid  to  develop  ability.  The  plainest 
of  those  is  educating  the  ignorant,  and  relieving  the 
sick  and  hungry,  especially  such  as  are  apt  to  try  to 
produce  for  themselves  when  they  are  well  enough. 

The  sick  and  hungry  who  are  not  able  to  produce  for 
themselves — the  constitutional  paupers,  it  seems  settled 
that  somebody  else  should  take  care  of  when  their 
relatives  cannot.  It  is  often  asked:  Why  should  worth- 
less people  be  taken  care  of  at  all?  Would  it  not  be 
better  to  let  them  die  and  get  rid  of  them?  That  is 
Nature's  way,  and  is  it  not  better  to  follow  Nature? 
That  might  seem  the  common  sense  of  it,  but  when 
Nature  evolved  human  intelligence  and  human  sym- 
pathies, she  started  a  way  with  the  unfortunates  and 
incapables  different  from  her  old  way  of  letting  them 
starve;  and,  somehow,  all  the  nations,  like  India  and 
China,  that  do  let  their  worthless  people  die,  do  not 
succeed  in  being  worth  very  much  themselves ;  while 
nations  like  Italy  and  Spain  that  go  to  the  opposite 
extreme,  and  give  freely  to  beggars  who  could  make 
a  living  if  they  would,  do  not  come  out  so  very  much 
better.  With  them  it  is  not  so  much  a  question  of 
helping  the  unfortunate  and  incapable,  as  of  encourag- 
ing the  lazy.  Such  countries,  of  course,  are  full  of 
beggars,   and   do  not  get  on  as  well  as   the   countries 


350  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  336 

where  everybody  has  to  produce  what  he  Hves  on  if 
he  is  able  to. 

336  A^;  It  should      After  finding  objections  against  all  the 
continue  on  pres-    revolutionary    social    changes    that    have 
mes.  been  proposed  to  help  the  poor,  there  seems 

nothing  to  do  but  what  we  are  doing  now,  only  doing  it 
as  much  better  as  we  can :  civilization  has  been  working 
at  the  problem  some  thousands  of  years,  and  must  have 
learned  something.  Apparently  all  we  can  do  for  the 
lowest  type  of  man  is  to  wash  him,  doctor  him,  massage 
him,  feed  him,  exercise  him,  make  as  much  of  a  man 
of  him  as  we  can,  educate  him  without  devoting  as 
much  time  to  the  most  artificial  spelling  in  the  world 
as  to  some  decent  handicraft,  and  then  turn  him  loose, 
if  he  is  fit  to  turn  loose,  to  be  farther  strengthened  by 
the  discipline  of  the  world. 

As  to  the  higher  type  of  unemployed,  the  deserving 
and  capable,  there  are  seldom  nearly  as  many  of  them 
as  sympathetic  people  generally  suppose.  Most  of  the 
unemployed  do  not  want  to  be  employed.  The  "great 
problem  of  the  unemployed"  is  generally  only  one  form  of 
the  great  problem  of  the  useless  and  incapable,  and  with 
the  improved  adjustments  of  industry,  it  is  becoming 
more  and  more  so  every  day,  or  would  be  if  strikes  were 
restricted  to  reasonable  cases.  Yet  there  constantly  are 
deserving  men  whom  the  shifts  and  accidents  of  trade 
are  throwing  out  of  employment.  The  effort  should 
be  to  tide  them  over,  of  course,  but  (more  effective 
still,  tho,  like  all  reform,  slow)  to  educate  them  so  that 
they  will  more  often  anticipate  the  shifts  and  accidents 
of  trade.  But  not  everything  can  be  done  by  educa- 

tion. There  are  often  highly  educated  doctors,  lawyers, 
engineers,  architects  with  nothing  to  do,  yet  education 
does  help  men:  the  educated  generally  have  more  fore- 
thought than  men  less  fortunately  brought  up,  and  so 
are  apt  to  have  something  laid  up  for  a  rainy  day.  For 
all  classes  of  those  who  have  nothing  laid  up — who  if 
they  ever  had  anything,  have  exhausted  it,  the  Charity 
Organization   Societies  and  Labor   Bureaus  are  doing 


§336  6]  Personal  Property.  351 

excellent  work — better  than  any  government  ever  did 
or  is  apt  to  do. 

We  cannot  remedy  at  once  all  the  defects  that  the 
wisdom  of  the  whole  world  has  vainly  attacked  for  a 
good  many  thousand  years.  But  we  cannot  afford  to 
throw  over  all  it  has  succeeded  in  doing,  in  favor  of 
imaginative  untried  schemes,  especially  if  they  do  not 
hold  together  any  better  than  those  we  have  already 
examined. 

Of  course  the  ideal  is  a  philanthropy 
336  (b).  It  should  entirely  spontaneous,  but  there  is  one  con- 
tlat  Tal'nlt  Zlrk.  ditiou  whcrc  govcmmcnt  should  take  one 
man's  property  and  give  it  to  another: 
spontaneous  philanthropy  may  not  always  be  within 
reach,  tho  it  is  generally  where  a  little  sense  can  find  it; 
but  government  is  always  at  hand,  and  may  properly 
support  a  man  who  really  cannot  support  himself  and 
has  no  relatives  who  can  support  him. 

While  caring  for  the  unemployed  is  very  apt  to  mean 
caring  for  the  deliberately  idle,  caring  for  the  unemploy- 
able is  already  recognized  as  among  the  functions  of  the 
civilized  state.  And  this  care  of  the  unfortunate  should 
not  be  restricted  to  those  barely  able  to  keep  them- 
selves alive,  but  should  be  extended,  as  far  as  it  can  be 
without  doing  more  harm  than  good,  to  those  unable  to 
keep  themselves  decently  alive.  Human  nature  has  not 
yet  been  universally,  or  perhaps  generally,  evolved 
beyond  the  point  where  the  strong  will  take  advantage  of 
the  weak ;  and  it  seems  as  legitimate  for  the  law^  to  pro- 
tect the  weak  from  robbery  under  the  form  of  bargains, 
as  from  robbery  under  other  forms.  Of  course  the  diffi- 
culty of  doing  so  without  lessening  freedom  of  contract 
and  a  saving  sense  of  personal  responsibility,  is  very 
great,  but  the  law's  cautious  experiments  toward  it 
should  be  steadily  continued,  and  more  caution  still 
should  be  used  against  the  acceptance  of  quack  panaceas. 

Under  our  civilization,  government  protects  without 
charge  against  violence  and  theft,  and  also  assigns  counsel 
to  an  alleged  criminal  if  he  is  unable  to  pay  for  it ;  but 
to  obtain  disputed  rights,  a  man  must  pay  for  counsel 


352  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  336  6 

and  court  costs  himself.  Hence,  as  far  as  the  law  is 
evolved,  it  has  been  not  unjustly  called  a  luxury  of 
the  rich,  and  even  the  rich  often  refrain  from  resorting 
to  it  on  account  of  the  expense.  To  relieve  the  special 
disadvantages  of  the  poor  in  this  respect,  there  have 
been  formed  in  several  cities.  Legal  Aid  Societies,  which 
for  some  years  have  been  of  great  service  in  securing  the 
protection  of  the  law  for  persons  otherwise  too  poor  or 
too  ignorant  to  avail  themselves  of  it. 

There  is  a  limit  on  what  government  can  safely  take 
for  such  purposes :  it  should  not  take  enough  to  prevent 
lazy  people  trying  to  protect  themselves,  or  to  discourage 
able  people  from  producing. 

We  have  paid  much  attention  to  the 
th^e\awT'""  °^  hopeless  absurdity  of  some  pet  schemes 
for  helping  the  poor  man  by  law.  Yet 
law  is  far  from  useless  to  help  the  less  fortunate  masses 
of  mankind.  All  good  laws  help  everybody,  and  until 
the  recent  appeal  to  law  by  the  strong  against  the  com- 
bined aggressions  of  the  weak,  the  evolution  of  law 
has  been  toward  the  protection  of  the  weak  against 
the  strong.  But  there  is  a  great  difference  between 
laws  to  prevent  oppression,  and  laws  to  give  a  man 
more  than  he  can  produce,  at  the  expense  of  somebody 
else.  Such  laws,  so  far  as  they  can  be  made  to  work, 
would  simply  oppress*the  somebody  else.  True,  where 
a  man  is  living  in  luxury  and  idleness  and  selfishness, 
a  little  oppression  for  the  benefit  of  less  fortunate  people 
337  (a)  Cannot  flight  be  good  for  him,  if  it  were  possible 
discriminate  be-     for    the    law    to    begin    oppressing    him, 

tween  people.  •j.i  ^  •  r      j.i  i  ■  j.i 

Without  going  farther  and  ojipressmg  the 
wrong  people. 

22g    g       .  Not  only  does  there  seem  to  be  something 

does' not  prevent  ac-  in  history  to  show  that  a  reasonable  com- 
cumulating  wealth,  p^gsion  for  Suffering,  even  if  the  suffering 
comes  from  a  man's  own  weakness  and  fault,  helps  peo- 
ple who  feel  it,  to  get  ahead;  but  other  facts  besides 
the  progress  of  the  benevolent  nations,  look  as  if  the  habit 
of  being  benevolent  tends  to  enlarge  Ability.     Many  of 


§  339]  Personal  Property.  353 

the  richest  men  are  benevolent,  and  get  rich  and  stay 
rich,  in  spite  of  all  they  give  away. 

At  first  it  looks  as  if  it  might  be  safe  to  take  away  from 
a  man  all  that  he  might  have  over  a  reasonably  good 
living,  but  it  would  stop  the  usefulness  of  such  men  as 
Vanderbilt  and  Stewart  just  at  the  time  when  they  are 
giving  employment  to  most  people,  and  doing  the  most 
to  make  everybody's  money  go  farther.  Even  if  a  man 
is  getting  rich  by  the  sort  of  speculation 
pecu  a  ion.  ^.j^^(^|^  jg  a^gut  the  same  as  robbery ,  it 
would  be  impossible  for  the  laws  to  select  the  kind  of 
speculation  any  better  than  the  laws  against  fraud  can 
select  it.  Yet  there  is  good  reason  to  hope  that  the  laws 
can  gradually  be  improved. 

But  there  is  much  more  honest  speculation  than 
fraudulent  speculation,  and  it  saves  the  community  a 
great  deal  of  money  by  anticipating  changes  and  pre- 
paring for  them.     It  is  like  springs  on  a  wagon. 

If  speculation  is  by  deceit  and  monopoly,  of  course 
all  ill-gotten  gains  should  be  restored,  but  it  is  not  so 
plain  that  they  should  be  confiscated  to  public  use 
if  the  robbed  person  cannot  be  identified;  and  success- 
ful new  laws  to  make  it  easier  to  prove  gains  ill-gotten 
than  the  present  laws  do,  can  be  only,  as  the  present 
laws  are,  the  product  of  slow  growth. 

It  is  often  asked:  If  a  man  is  not  active  either  in  pro- 
duction or  speculation,  but  is  merely  living  on  a  for- 
tune which  may  have  been  justly  earned,  but  in  fact 
was  not  earned  by  its  possessor  at  all — for  which  he 
never  gave  the  community  any  return,  why  not  relieve 
him  of  that  excess  which  does  him  no  good,  and  put  it 
where  it  will  do  some? 

The  law  could  not  go  into  such  fine  questions  as  the 
amotmt  of  good  it  does  him,  or  he  does  with  it.  But 
even  suppose  the  question  "lumped":  if  a  man  spends 
a  great  superfluity  even  in  the  best  of  the  selfish  ways — 
in  fine  decorations  and  other  works  of  art,  rare  books, 
and  all  that,  why  not  let  the  community  take  that 
money  and  spend  it  for  the  same  things,  so  that  many 


354  ^^^<?  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  339 

men  would  enjoy  them,  instead  of  one  man  and  his 
friends  ? 

340  Law  cannot  ^*-*^  °^^  reason,  the  community  would 
regulate  wealth  probably  Spend  it  very  badly.  Tammany 
'*'^^^'  taste,  and  even  Congressional  taste,  are  not 

good,  and  even  that  of  the  Army  of  the  Tennessee  regard- 
ing statues  has  been  questioned. 

There  is,  however,  a  better  reason,  al- 
'pimiyze  Abfin"y°^  ready  partly  given.  Such  fortunes,  even  if 
wisely  devoted  to  the  public  good,  would 
not  begin  to  benefit  the  public  as  much  as  do  many  of 
the  efforts  of  enterprisers  which  would  not  have  been 
called  forth  if  the  enterprisers  could  not  leave  their  for- 
tunes to  whom  they  please.  Enterprisers  would  be  apt 
to  stop  in  mid-career,  if  going  on  involved  accustoming 
their  children  to  habits  of  living  which  they  could  not 
hope  to  keep  up.  When  a  great  enterpriser  is  at  the 
height  of  his  powers,  his  ambitions  for  himself  are  apt 
to  be  satisfied.  His  usefulness  is  kept  up  to  increase 
the  share  of  his  production  which  he  can  leave  to 
those  he  loves. 

When  we  were  discussing  the  general  principles  of 
rights  and  duties,  we  concluded  that  there  is  a  certain 
balance  in  things.  And  it  would  seem  to  require  that 
341.  Duties  of  while  the  world  is  at  work,  every  man 
wealth.  should  do  his  share:    and  as  a  man  who 

has  great  powers  or  great  opportunities,  gets  much 
more  from  the  world  than  mere  government  conveni- 
ence and  police  protection, — much  more  in  the  way  of 
honor  and  ease  than  his  money  pays  for,  he  conse- 
quently owes  the  community  something  more  than 
merely  his  share  of  the  ordinary  taxes. 

But  while  we  admit  that  the  great  enterpriser  does 
his  share  of  the  world's  work  when,  in  addition  to  pay- 
ing his  taxes  and  being  reasonable  in  his  charities,  he 
finds  work  for  his  less  able  fellow  men,'  and  conducts 
his  enterprises  honestly  and  liberally;  the  rich  man 
who  is  not  an  enterpriser  certainly  has  his  duties  too, 
especially  in  a  country  suffering,  like  ours,  from  having 
in  political  office  too  few  men  who  are  so  rich  that  they 


§  342]  Personal  Property.  355 

"can  afford  to  be  honest".  A  few  such  men  are  too 
modest  (wisely  so,  in  some  instances)  to 
take  office,  but  most  of  them  prefer  to 
amuse  themselves,  all  of  them  hate  to  associate  with 
the  low  type  of  politician  we  sometimes  elect,  and — per- 
haps the  strongest  reason  of  all — our  people  are  not 
fond  of  electing  rich  men  of  leisure,  unless  they  started 
in  the  ranks;  and  even  then,  in  too  many  cases,  unless 
the  candidates  are  ready  to  pay  for  it.  They  should 
not  pay  for  it,  because  there  is  enough  bribery  of  bosses 
and  of  voters  already.  True,  to  be  useful  in  politics, 
a  man  need  not  necessarily  take  office:  he  can  study 
politics  and  public  men  so  as  to  know  good  from  bad, 
he  can  support  the  good  and  oppose  the  bad,  and  help 
educate  the  people  to  do  the  same. 
341  (b).  In  charity  "^^^  there  are  other  ways  than  politics 
and  education  or  in  wliich  a  man  of  Icisure  can  reciprocate 
spor .  -^hat  the  community  is  doing  for  him— 
there  are  all  sorts  of  charitable  and  educational  and 
artistic  institutions,  and  necessities  for  new  institutions, 
that  need  his  time  even  more  than  they  need  his  money. 
,   ,  If  the  best  he  can  do  and  all  he  can 

men"pecu1ia^rf/ob-  do,  is  to  amuse  Others  while  he  amuses 
Ijvious  of  public  himself — in  horse-races,  yacht-races  and 
similar  amusements,  he  cannot  be  regarded 
as  useless,  even  if  he  does  not  avoid  the  palpable  danger 
of  such  sports.  But  compared  with  other  countries, 
America  does  not  get  her  share  of  service  in  politics, 
charity,  education,  public  improvements,  the  arts,  and 
even  amusement,  from  her  men  of  leisure:  in  older 
countries,  such  duties  are  matters  of  course  in  the  edu- 
cation of  the  more  fortunate  classes.  But  here,  as  we 
are  all  free  and  equal  and  govern  ourselves,  our  need 
of  a  class  to  attend  honestly  and  energetically  to  politics, 
is  much  greater  than  the  need  in  the  older  countries: 
we  govern  ourselves  very  badly.  Tho  the  Old  World 
sometimes  sends  us  a  Carl  Schurz,  a  Godkin  or  a  Franz 
Sigel,  we  are  still  the  dumping-ground  for  its  refuse 
population;  and  we  have  no  class  of  hereditary  poli- 
ticians and    men    of    public    spirit,   and    no    long    and 


356  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  342 

wealthy  past  sending  us  a  rich  inheritance  of  charita- 
ble, educational  and  artistic  institutions.  The  Ameri- 
can man  of  leisure  who  satisfies  himself  by  merely  giving 
money,  neglects  his  other  duties,  and  devotes  himself 
to  mere  selfish  sports  and  luxury,  is  just  as  much  more 
blamable  than  the  European  one,  as  our  civilization  is 
younger  and  less  developed  than  the  European  one. 
A  man,  rich  or  poor,  anywhere,  who  does 
343,  Useless  not  do  his  fair  share  of  the  world's  work, 

rich  man  a  ..,  rnii  -,  ,  ,, 

"dependent".  IS  Simply  one  of  the  dependent  classes  — 
he  depends  on  others  while  giving  no  ade- 
quate return.  His  money  may  be  in  one  sense  an  ade- 
quate return,  but  unless  he  made  it  himself,  he  is  merely 
dependent  on  the  man  who  made  it,  whether  that  man 
be  alive  or  dead.  Dependence  does  very  well  for 
women  and  children,  but  it  is  disgraceful  in  a  man. 

No  American  has  surpassed  in  wisdom  or  benevo- 
lence, the  one  who  summed  up  this  whole  subject  of 
the  distribution  of  wealth  in  the  following  winged 
words : 

"Wealth  brings  with  it  its  own  checks  and  balances. 
The  basis  of  political  economy  is  non-interference. 
The  only  safe  rule  is  found  in  the  self-adjusting  meter 
of  demand  and  supply.  Do  not  legislate.  Meddle, 
and  you  snap  the  sinews  with  your  sumptuary  laws. 
Give  no  bounties;  make  equal  laws;  secure  life  and 
property,  and  you  need  not  give  alms.  Open  the 
doors  of  opportunity  to  talent  and  virtue,  and  they  will 
do  themselves  justice,  and  property  will  not  be  in  bad 
hands.  In  a  free  and  just  commonwealth,  property 
rushes  from  the  idle  and  imbecile  to  the  industrious, 
brave  and  persevering." — Emerson. 


BOOK  II. 

THE   PROMOTION    OF  CONVENIENCE. 
CHAPTER  XXIV. 

PRELIMINARY    SURVEY. 

So  much  for  government's  protection  of  rights.  We 
saw  that  its  other  general  function  is  the  promotion  of 
the  people's  convenience.  Yet  while  we  have  been  dis- 
cussing the  state's  relation  to  rights,  it  has  come  in 
our  way  to  touch  upon  some  conveniences — when  we 
were  treating  of  natural  monopolies,  we  mentioned 
roads,  bridges  and  ferries,  railroads  through  country 
and  city,  water  and  gas  supplies,  sewer  connections, 
and  the  development  of  extraordinary  mines,  springs 
and  scenery. 

As  we  know,  some  of  these  things  are  objects  of 
attention  by  all  civilized  governments.  So  are  many 
other  conveniences — chief  among  them,  money,  educa- 
tion, postal  service — which  in  Europe  often  includes 
the  carrying  of  telegrams  and  packages — surveys  and 
maps  of  the  country,  harbors  well  dredged,  protected 
and  docked;  lighthouses,  coast  life-saving  stations, 
parks,  museums,  libraries,  almshouses,  asylums  and 
hospitals.  The  things  enumerated  in  this  paragraph  are 
provided  by  all  civilized  governments.  Some  govern- 
ments also  provide  superintendence  of  public  health, 
electricity,  gas,  public  baths  and  lavatories,  pawnshops, 

357 


35S  The  Promotion  of  Convenience. 

concerts,  lectures,  houses  for  the  self-supporting  poor, 
and  cemeteries. 

These  things  are  not  generally  gratuitous,  however, 
even  in  the  sense  that  taxes  pay  for  them:  persons 
using  money,  railroads,  mails,  harbors,  water,  light, 
cars,  ferries,  houses,  and  cemeteries  for  their  dead, 
generally  pay  for  them  directly. 

A  century  ago,  hardly  any  government  took  care  of 
any  of  the  things  named,  except  money,  roads,  light- 
houses, harbors,  and,  in  a  very  limited  way,  mails  and 
parks.  Even  then  the  parks  were  hardly  public  parks : 
they  were  rarely  more  than  the  pleasure-grounds  of 
rulers  and  rich  .people,  occasionally  thrown  open  to 
the  public.  The  great  parks  which  everybody  can  en- 
joy at  all  times  were  almost  unknown. 

Regarding  some  of  these  conveniences,  great  differ- 
ence of  opinion  prevails  as  to  whether  government 
should  supply  them,  or  leave  people  to  do  it  for  them- 
selves. As  to  those  that  all  civilized  governments 
supply,  v/e  may  as  well  consider  debate  closed,  at  least, 
as  regards  the  wisdom  of  government  supplying  them. 
But  even  of  them,  there  are  some  on  which  there  is 
great  debate  regarding  what  kind  and  how  much, 
especially  regarding  money,  treatment  of  the  defective 
classes,  roads  in  their  new  forms  of  railroads  and  street 
railways,  and  sundry  minor  matters. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

MONEY. 

General  Considerations. 

We  can  begin  with  a  topic  that  has,  at  least,  one 
easy  side.  Of  all  the  items  enumerated,  probably  the 
earliest  supplied  by  government,  and  the  one  where 
government  agency  is  most  taken  for  granted,  is  money. 
The  use  of  our  spending  any  time  now  on  money  ques- 
tions may  be  doubted,  as  it  may  be  claimed  that 
the  Act  of  March,  1900,  (not  to  speak  of  the  elec- 
tions in  November  of  that  year  and  in  1904,)  dis- 
posed of  them  all,  as  far  as  this  country  is  concerned. 
344.  Reasons  for  But  Mr.  Bryan's  followers  did  not  seem  to 
studying  money,  think  SO,  nor  docs  the  Honorable  Tom 
Watson.  Money  questions  will  never  stay  disposed  of,  as 
long  as  the  vast  majority  of  mankind  are  of  low  produc- 
ing power  and  low  intelligence.  So  long,  men  will  try 
to  better  their  condition  by  tricks  with  money,  land- 
tenure,  government  control  of  production,  frequent 
strikes — all  of  the  old  schemes  to  get  something  out 
of  nothing,  but  with  hosts  of  new  faces. 

Moreover,  another  reason  why  the  Act  of  1900  did  not 
finally  settle  all  the  questions,  is  because  it  did  not 
touch  them  all,  as  we  shall  see. 

For  three  reasons,  it  is  very  important  for  the  citizen 
to  understand  the  government's  relation  to  money. 
First,  because  meddling  with  money  questions  by  the 
ignorant  has  caused  this  country  and  most  countries 
some  terrible  disasters — this  country,   perhaps,  worst 

359 


360  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  344 

of  all,  because  here  the  ignorant  have  most  to  say. 
Second,  because  money  questions  come  more  directly 
home,  literally  to  each  man's  pocket,  than  any  other 
questions  which  government  affects.  Third,  because, 
for  that  very  reason,  people  are  apt  to  suppose  they 
know  all  about  money  questions,  and  are  therefore  less 
apt  to  leave  them,  than  questions  of  the  post-office, 
the  coast-survey  and  lighthouse  board,  and  the  admin- 
istration of  war  and  justice,  to  be  settled  by  people  who 
really  know. 

Even  the  administration  of  justice  is  hardly  a  more 
important  government  function  than  issuing  money. 
True,  justice  is  more  important  in  a  general  sense  than 
money:  but  nothing  works  more  against  justice  than 
ignorant  tampering  with  money.  Money  touches  every 
man,  while  not  one  man  in  fifty  ever  gets  into  court; 
and  when  he  does,  he  soon  finds  that  he  does  not  know 
anything  about  law.  But  nearly  every  man  has  a 
little  money,  and  so  seems  to  think  he  knows  all  about 
that;  and  apparently,  if  he  has  none  at  all,  he  is  still 
more  apt  to  think  he  knows  all  about  it. 

345.  Barter  and  Now,  to  begin  with  the  simplest  aspect 

Money.  of  the  subject,  if  there  were  no  money  in 

the  world,  and  a  farmer  wanted  a  hat,  and  his  wife 
a  frock,  and  his  child  a  pair  of  shoes,  he  would  trade 
off  for  them  at  the  store  a  load  of  potatoes  or  any  avail- 
able thing  he  might  have.  The  usual  name  for  such 
dealings  is  barter.  It  is  customary  only  before  people 
become  civilized  enough  to  have  money.  Yet  the 
farmer  might  go  around  ^ong  before  finding  a  shoe- 
maker who  wanted  just  potatoes  enough  to  pay  for  a 
pair  of  shoes,  and  a  hatter  who  would  take  just  potatoes 
enough  to  pay  for  a  hat,  and  a  dry -goods  man  who 
wanted  just  potatoes  enough  to  pay  for  a  frock.  More- 
over, as  the  city  storekeepers  do  not  generally  bother 
with  such  dealings,  the  farmer  might  spend  a  week, 
perhaps,  without  finding  one  who  would.  They  would 
all  laugh  at  him  for  asking  them  to. 

Still,  of  course  all  this  trouble  would  be  necessary 


§  347]  Money — General  Considerations.  361 

only  if  we  had  no  money.  Now  as  we  have  money, 
the  farmer  naturally  takes  his  potatoes  where  they  buy 
potatoes,  and  then  takes  his  money  where  they  sell 
shoes  or  hats  or  frocks.  So  the  mere  fact  that  we 
have  money,  would  save  him  as  much  troble  as, 
probably,  his  potatoes  cost.  On  considering  this 
in  regard  to  all  sorts  of  dealings,  one  gets  some  idea 
of  the  very  great  usefulness  of  money. 

346,  Swindling  by  Suppose,  tho,  that  our  farmer  got  paid  in 
"^°"^y-  poor  money?  then  he  could  not  do  any- 
thing. But  as  any  man  giving  another  poor  money  de- 
ceives him  and  robs  him,  what  is  to  be  thought  of  a 
man  who  tries  to  make  all  the  money  in  the  country 
poor?  Plainly  that  he  would  attempt  the  greatest  fraud 
that  can  well  be  conceived  of,  and  do  a  frightful  deal  of 
harm.  And  yet  at  the  height  of  what  we  Americans 
fondly  believe  to  be  the  highest  civilization  yet  attained, 
many  well-meaning  men  have  attempted  that  gigantic 
fraud,  from  ignorance;  and  many  others  from  dishonesty. 

347,  Kinds  of  1^1  the  United  States  we  use  many 
^o^^y-  kinds  of  money — paper,  gold,  silver,  nickel 
and  copper.  The  Chinese,  Spartans  and  a  good  many 
other  nations  have  had  iron  money.  The  American 
Indians  used  wampum  for  money;  and  they  also,  as 
well  as  our  New  England  ancestors,  used  discs  of  shell. 
The  fur-traders  near  our  northern  borders,  and  many 
other  people,  have  used  skins.  Tobacco  too  has  been 
used,  and  so  have  wheat  and  corn;  and  in  Africa, 
cattle  and  even  slaves  have  been  used  as  money,  and 
called  live  money,  as  distinct  from  other  kinds,  called 
dead  money. 

We  give  all  these  things  the  same  name — money. 
Now  all  things  that  can  have  a  name  in  common,  must 
have  at.  least  one  quality  in  common,  but  they  need 
not  look  alike,  any  more  than  all  things  we  call  food 
look  alike.  The  very  different  things  we  call  food, 
can  all  h^  ^ptpn,  and  will  all  help  keep  the  body 
alive. 


362  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  348 

348,  Qualities  of         ^o  all  the  things  that  have  been  called 
all  money.  money,  have  the  quality  in  common  that 

wherever  one   of   them  is  used  as  money,  people  will 
give  nearly  all  other  things  for  it. 

But  some  people  will  give  nearly  all  other  things  for 
a  check  on  a  bank,  or  a  promissory  note.  Yet  they  are 
not  money,  because  people  generally  will  give  other 
things  for  money,  while  for  checks  and  notes,  other 
things  will  not  be  given  by  people  generally,  but  only 
by  people  who  know  all  about  the  checks  and  notes, 
and  have  confidence  in  them. 

Another  difference  is  that  if  a  check  or  a  note  turns 
out  at  any  time  not  to  be  good,  the  person  who  last 
received  it  usually  has  a  right  to  demand  that  the  per- 
son who  paid  it  shall  make  it  good :  that  is  one  reason 
for  wanting  to  know  if  the  person  signing  is  solvent. 
But  if  money  is  what  it  appears  to  be  when  it  is  paid, 
the  debt  is  discharged  once  for  all.  If,  for  instance,  a 
bank  breaks,  or  a  government  is  overthrown,  those  who 
have  any  of  its  money  cannot  require  the  people  from 
whom  they  received  it,  to  make  it  good  to  them.  Of 
course  counterfeit  money  is  not  included  in  this  condi- 
tion :  counterfeit  money  is  not  money  at  al]— not  even 
bad  money,  any  more  than  a  portrait  is  a  person.  But 
real  money  may  turn  out  bad:  government  notes  are 
real  mone3^  but  they  would  be  worth  no  more  than 
paper  if  the  government  did  not  pay  them.  So  a  silver 
dollar  of  the  present  weight  is  real  money,  but  it  would 
be  worth  but  fifty  cents  if  the  government  would  not 
give  a  gold  dollar  for  it.  So  bad  money  can  be  legal 
tender,  and  a  man  be  legally  obliged  to  take  it:  the 
treasury  notes  now  in  circulation  are  not  good  money, 
because  they  are  not  expressly  payable  in  gold,  yet 
they  are  legal  tender;  and  bad  money  was. made  legal 
tender  all  through  the  civil  war,  and  for  years  after  it, 
until  in  1879  government  made  the  money  good  by 
being  ready  to  give  gold  for  it. 

When  a  creditor  accepts  a  legal  tender 
L^Legal^TeX!^     (2IO-2[o^)  the  debtor  is  legally  free  from 
farther  liability,  even  if  the  money  should 
turn  out  bad,  unless  it  is  counterfeit. 


§  35^]  Money — General  Considerations.  363 

Now  we  are  ready  to  pack  our  characterizations  of 
money  into  a  portable  definition: 

350.  Definition  Money   is    anything   for   which   suhstan- 

reached.  tially  all  the  people  in  a  community  will  part 

with  anything  they  are  willing  to  dispose  of,  and  which  dis- 
charges forever  the  debt  for  which  it  is  received. 

Broadly  considered,  money  is  simply  power  con- 
veniently arranged  in  units.  A  hundred  dollars  is  a 
hundred  units  of  power  controlling  most  of  the  things 
that  men  generally  care  for.  After  men  have  enough 
money  to  satisfy  all  material  and  aesthetic  wants,  they 
crave  more  because  they  want  more  power.  The  great 
bankers  often  control  the  policies  of  nations.-  But 
it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the  great  philosophers 
control  them  more  often,  and  for  centuries  after  the 
bankers  are  dead. 

Usually  the  most  noticeable  difference 
buys  less  than  good,  between  good  and  bad  money  is  that  for 

anything  they  have  to  sell,  people  want 
more  bad  money  than  good  money.  For  instance,  when 
our  New  England  ancestors  began  using  discs  of  shell 
for  money,  at  first  people  would  take  a  few  of  them  as 
pay  for  ordinary  purchases;  but  soon,  so  many  discs 
were  made  that  nobody  would  sell  a  thing  for  any  amount 
of  them.  The  same  way  during  our  great  civil  war: 
people  North  wanted  at  one  time  nearly  three  green- 
back dollars  for  a  thing  that  they  would  take  one  gold 
dollar  for,  and  people  at  the  South  wanted  a  hundred 
Confederate  paper  dollars  for  anything  they  would  sell 
for  one  gold  one,  and  at  last  they  would  not  sell  things 
for  the  paper  dollars  at  any  price.  But  people  sell 
the  same  thing  now  for  a  United  States  paper  dollar 
that  they  will  sell  for  a  gold  one. 

These  great  differences  in  the  value  of 
Dapernfdney'."         papcr    dollars    have    arisen    because    the 

value  of  paper  dollars  depends  upon  the 
chance  of  getting  gold  ones  for  them.  A  note  of  a  govern- 
ment or  of  a  bank  has  no  magic  about  it,  any  more  than 
the  note  of  an  individual,  even  tho  the  government 


364  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  352 

note  does  have  more  pictures  over  it,  and  the  pictures 
do  fool  the  ignorant.  It  is  but  a  piece  of  paper  contain- 
ing a  promise  to  pay,  and  all  its  value  beyond  that 
of  the  pictures,  is  in  the  reliability  of  that  promise. 
Now  you  can  get  a  gold  dollar  for  a  paper  one  at  any 
moment.  During  the  civil  war  you  could  not,  and  it 
was  very  uncertain  when  you  could;  and  the  value  of 
the  paper  dollar  varied  with  that  uncertainty  until  at 
times  it  was  but  forty'  cents  in  gold.  The  uncertainty 
was  greater  regarding  a  Confederate  paper  dollar  than 
a  Union  one:  so  the  Confederate  dollar  was  generally 
worth  less  than  the  Union  one;  and  finally  it  became 
certain  that  you  never  could  get  a  gold  dollar  for  a 
Confederate  paper  one,  and  the  paper  ones  were  worth- 
less. 

Tho  a  paper  dollar  is  money,  people  often  prefer  a 
gold  one,  not  merely  because  a  paper  dollar  will  soon 
wear  out,  but  especially  because,  if  a  paper  dollar 
should  not  be  useful  as  money,  it  cannot  be  put  to  any 
other  use  worth  a  dollar.  It  would  only  be  used  as  a 
picture,  generally  a  pretty  poor  one,  or  as  paper  pulp  to 
make  new  paper,  and  it  is  not  worth  a  tenth  of  a  cent 
for  that  purpose;  while  the  gold  in  a  gold  dollar  can 
be  put  to  a  thousand  uses,  any  one  of  which  is  worth  a 
dollar — in  short,  a  gold  dollar  is  worth  a  dollar,  and  a 
paper  dollar  is  worth  nothing  except  as  a  promise  to  pay 
a  dollar;  and  how  much  that  promise  is  worth,  depends 
upon  how  likely  it  is  to  be  kept. 

353,  Fiat  Money,  Money  of  no  intrinsic  value  is  called 
Token  Money.  fi^t  money :  fiat  is  the  Latin  for  let  it  be. 
Fiat  money  is  money  only  because  the  government 
says:  "Let  it  be  money."  It  is  also  sometimes  called 
token  money,  just  as  a  gambler's  counters  are  tokens 
to  be  redeemed  in  money  vakuible  in  itself. 

354.  Redemption  Money  valuable  in  itself,  which  redeems 
i^o"ey,  flat  money  or  token  money,  is  called  re- 
demption money.  A  gold  dollar  will  be  taken  almost 
anywhere  for  about  the  value  of  so  much  gold,  because 
somebody  near  at  hand  can  use  it  as  so  much  gold. 


§  354]  Money — General  Considerations.  365 

But  a  paper  dollar  will  not  be  taken  at  full  value  in  a 
country  where  it  was  not  issued,  because  nobody  can 
use  it  there  for  anything  but  old  paper,  and  it  must 
be  sent  home  for  redemption.  If  you  were  in  London 
with  a  pocketful  of  greenbacks  and  nothing  else,  you 
could  not  buy  anything  until  you  had  hunted  up  a  dealer 
in  foreign  money,  and  sold  him  your  greenbacks  at 
enough  discount  to  pay  him  to  send  them  here  and 
get  the  gold  back.  Even  if  you  had  American  gold 
instead  of  greenbacks,  the  shopkeepers  would  not 
generally  take  that,  but  you  could  find  ten  people  who 
would,  to  one  who  would  take  greenbacks.  Only  a 
few  special  dealers  would  buy  the  greenbacks;  almost 
any  banker  or  large  shopkeeper  would  take  the  gold, 
tho  at  a  discount,  but  a  very  trifling  one  compared  with 
that  on  the  greenbacks.  Within  a  block,  somebody 
would  be  ready  to  put  the  gold  into  the  melting-pot  and 
use  it  for  making  jewelry  or  gilding  or  something  of 
that  kind;  or  the  English  mint  would  take  it  and  coin 
it  into  their  money.  But  nobody  could  do  anything 
with  the  greenback  except  send  it  to  America  and  wait 
for  the  gold,  and  pay  expenses  both  ways.  Therefore, 
paper  money  never  could  be  quite  as  good  as  gold 
money  for  foreign  trade. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

MONEY     (continued). 

Some  American  Experience. 

355.  How  paper  -^^  already  said,   during  the  civil  war, 

money  cheated  greenbacks  became  worth  only  forty  cents 
creditors,  ^^   ^   dollar,    and    a   result   was    that    if, 

when  the  war  broke  out,  a  man  owed  a  dollar  pay- 
able in  two  or  three  3^ears,  he  could  then  make  his 
creditor  take  forty  cents  for  it.  That  was  just  what 
hosts  of  people  did,  and  what  hosts  of  people,  during 
the  Bryan  campaigns,  wanted  to  do;  and  still  want  to 
do,  by  getting  a  chance  to  pay  irredeemable  silver  dol- 
lars where  they  have  borrowed  gold  ones.  During  the 
war,  the  transaction  was  somewhat  disguised  by  the 
pieces  of  paper  being  marked  as  worth  dollars,  and 
people  began  taking  them  before  they  began  to  depre- 
ciate. Moreover,  it  was  not  the  fashion  to  speak  of 
them  as  going  down  in  value,  but  of  gold  as  going  up; 
and  what  was  more  important,  people  endured  it  all 
cheerfully,  so  as  to  enable  the  government  to  use  the 
bad  money  to  carry  on  the  war.  The  government  made 
bad  money,  partly  because  most  of  our  rulers  at 
that  time  had  had  little  occasion  to  study  finance, 
and  knew  no  better.  Government  needed  money  at 
once  to  pay  the  expenses  of  the  army.  So,  rather  than 
incur  the  delay  and  expense  of  borrowing,  they  thought 
it  the  simplest  thing  to  issue  promises  to  pay,  which 
were  our  present  greenbacks  or  their  ancestors. 

As  this  money  was  legal  tender,  and  people  had  to 

366 


§357]         Money — Some' American  Experience.  367 

take  it,  a  little  explanation  may  be  needed  to  show 
how  it  could  get  bad.  People  did  not  need  to  sell 
355  (a),  and  things   for  it   unless   they   got   their  own 

raised  prices.  prices.  Therefore,  as  government  kept 
on  making  more  of  it,  and  people  began  to  lose  con- 
fidence in  it,  they  put  up  prices,  including  the  price 
of  gold,  so  that  a  man  who  wanted  a  gold  dollar  to 

356.  "Never  mind  pay  a  debt  in  Europe,  soon  had  to  pay 
^^rop^'"  for  it  over  two  dollars  and  sixty  cents  in 
greenbacks. 

357.  Effect  of  -^^  *^^^  years  '93  and  '94  depreciated 
money  not  payable  silver  made  a  difference  to  the  American 
'"  ^°^'  people  of  a  seventh  of  all  their  property 
— three  times  as  much  as  the  civil  war  cost — 
about  ten  thousand  million  dollars — nearly  a  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  to  each  man,  woman  and  child  in  the 
United  States.  True,  many  men,  women  and  children 
never  had  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  but  a  good  many 
of  them  might  have  had  it  in  wages,  in  those  years, 
who  did  not  get  it  because  our  money  was  not  good 
enough  for  all  foreign  purposes.  But  of  course  refer- 
ence was  made  only  to  the  average  loss — some  men 
lost  millions,  many  men  lost  thousands,  nearly  every 
laborer  in  the  land  lost  heavily  in  wages,  but  perhaps 
a  few  people  lost  nothing,  and  some  even  gained — a  few 
largely. 

Notwithstanding  that  for  more  than  twenty  years 
before  '93,  you  could  get  a  gold  dollar  for  a  paper  one 
or  a  silver  one,  our  money  was  not,  during  those  twenty 
years,  what  it  should  be  abroad  or  even  at  home,  as 
the  events  of  '93  abundantly  demonstrated.  Wise 
people  were  afraid  that  in  a  short  time  they  could 
not  get  a  gold  dollar  for  a  paper  one  or  a  silver  one, 
and  ran  business  at  very  low  pressure  in  consequence. 
The  fear  existed  because  very  few  of  our  paper  dol- 
lars were  actually  made  by  law  payable  in  gold:  most 
of  them  were  payable  either  in  silver  or  in  "coin", 
which  is  either  gold  or  silver;  and  there  got  to  be  so 
many  of  these  dollars  out,  that  people  began  to  fear 
that  if  any  mishap  like  a  war  or  a  panic  should  reduce 


368  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  357 

the  government's  revenue,  it  would  not  have  gold 
enough  to  be  able  to  pay  such  paper  dollars  in  any- 
thing but  silver.  Moreover,  none  of  the  silver  dollars 
were  made  by  actual  law  payable  in  gold,  and  per- 
haps we  might  not  have  been  able  to  get  gold  enough 
to  pay  them  if  they  were. 

Our  silver  dollar  is  only  token  money  (353).  It  really 
contains  only  fifty  cents'  worth  of  silver,  and  if  our 
paper  money  were  redeemed  only  in  it,  and  it  were 
not  redeemed  in  gold,  our  silver  dollars  might  easily 
go  the  way  the  greenbacks  went  during  the  civil  war. 
We  are  really  saddled  with  two  kinds  of  doubtful  money. 
358    Wh    the  There  is  only  fifty  cents'  worth  of  silver 

silver  dollar  has  in  the  silver  dollar  because  when  the 
depreciated.  amount  was  settled  upon,  silver  was  worth 

much  more  than  now — the  amount  put  in  the  dollar 
was  worth  about  a  gold  dollar  then.  But  since  then, 
especially  from  '79  to  '93,  the  production  of  silver  has 
been  greater  than  that  of  gold,  and  the  price  has  come 
down  with  a  run.  Not  only  has  the  increased  amount 
lowered  the  price  of  silver,  but  there  has  also  been  a 
great  decrease  in  the  uses  for  it.  For  some  time  pre- 
vious to  the  publication  of  this  edition,  it  has  been 
rising,  but  not  enough  to  materially  alter  the  conditious 
herein  stated. 

When  there  is  a  great  deal  of  anything,  or  people 
have  little  use  for  it,  it  is  cheap — what  people  cannot 
use,  they  will  sell  low. 

The  great  decrease  in  the  uses  for  silver  was  mainly 
due  to  a  large  part  of  the  world  abandoning  its  legal- 
tender  quality  for  large  sums.  Soon  after  the  uniting 
of  the  German  states  into  an  empire  in  1871,  the  empire 
wanted  to  make  a  new  uniform  money  system  to  take 
the  place  of  the  old  differing  systems  of  the  various 
kingdoms,  and  it  concluded  to  make  people  pay  their 
large  debts  only  in  gold.  So  a  vast  amount  of  old 
silver  coin  was  thrown  out  of  use,  and  put  upon  the 
market  merely  as  silver.  The  effect  was  the  same 
as  if  a  corresponding  weight  of  silver  table  service  had 
been  thrown  on  the  market :  silver  became  so  cheap  that 


§  360]        Money — Some  American  Experience.  369 

soon  Belgium,  Holland  and  France  stopped  the  yearly 
increase  of  their  silver  money,  which  they  had  been 
making  for  a  long  time.  That  left  still  more  silver  in 
the  general  market.  They  did  that  to  keep  out  of  the 
very  scrape  that  we  ran  ourselves  into  by  not  doing  it 
— by  having  so  much  depreciated  silver  coin  on  hand 
in  1893  that  the  danger  of  not  being  able  to  redeem 
it  in  gold  brought  on  the  terrible  financial  panic. 

In  1873,  some  of  our  own  wisest  statesmen,  antici- 
pating the  wisdom  of  France,  got  a  law  passed  discon- 
tinuing the  use  of  silver  for  payments  above  five  dollars. 
But  that  did  not  throw  much  old  coin  on  the  market, 
because  we  were  not  using  much.  But  our  example 
added  force  to  the  examples  of  France  and  Germany. 
In  June,  '93,  India,  the  greatest  silver-coinage  country  in 
the  world,  stopped  coining  silver,  the  price  went  lower 
than  ever  before,  and  that  helped  precipitate  our  panic. 
359  Whv  coins  When  the  price  of  silver  came  down  so, 
were,  not  made  our  government  did  not  put  more  of  it  in 
^^^'®'^'  the  dollar,  so  as  to  keep  it  worth  a  gold 

dollar.  It  is  always  hard  for  government  to  do  a  new 
thing,  because  so  many  people  have  to  get  together 
and  agree,  and  in  this  case  people  interested  in  silver- 
mining  opposed  using  twice  as  much  silver  for  a  dollar, 
altho  it  would  have  increased  the  demand  for  their 
metal.  For  one  reason,  they  thought  it  better  to  work  for 
the  repeal  of  the  law  passed  in  1873,  which  had  dimin- 
ished the  use  of  silver  as  money,  and  so  had  diminished 
the  demand  for  their  product.  Therefore  they  wanted 
silver  again  made  legal  tender  for  all  debts,  large  and 
small;  and  in  spite  of  all  we  have  seen,  they  succeeded 
in  recovering  again  for  their  light-weight  dollar,  the 
legal-tender  power  that  had  been  taken  away  in  '73. 
In  '78,  they  got  a  law  passed  making  the  light-weight 
360.  American  Re-  dollars  legal  tender,  and  requiring  the 
monetization  in  government  to  coin  from  $2,000,000  to 
^"       ■  $4,000,000  worth  of  silver  bullion  a  month. 

The  smaller  sum  alone  was  coined,  resulting  in  an  aver- 
age of  about  $2,500,000  in  money.  Government  received 
these  dollars  for  taxes,  but  was  not  under  obligation  to 


37©  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  360 

redeem  any  not  needed  for  taxes.  In  1890  the  coinage 
was  made  to  depend,  after  July  ist,  '91,  solely  on  the 
government's  need  of  money ,  but  the  treasury  was  obliged 
to  buy  four  million  five  hundred  thousand  ounces  of 
silver  a  month,  whether  it  coined  the  silver  or  not,  and 
to  issue  "treasury  notes  "  in  exchange  for  it.  These  too 
are  receivable  for  all  public  dues,  and  are  legal  tender, 
but  they  are  redeemable  only  in  silver  dollars,  which  are 
also  legal  tender.  Making  coin  worth  but  fifty  cents, 
legal  tender  for  a  dollar,  would  be  swindling  creditors 
just  as  badly  as  they  were  swindled  by  the  forty-cent 
greenback  during  the  civil  war,  if  the  coin  was  worth 
only  fifty  cents;  but  it  is  token  money  (353)  for  a  dollar, 
and  as  long  as  redeemable,  is  of  course  worth  a  dollar. 
But,  as  already  said,  it  may  not  always  be  redeemed. 
Whatever  silver  had  to  be  coined,  was  not  put  into 
dollars  heavy  enough  to  be  each  worth  a  dollar, 
partly  because  people  generally  did  not  know  the  dan- 
gers of  light  coinage;  and  some  who  did,  would  gladly 
have  risked  them,  and  have  exposed  the  whole  coun- 
try to  them,  for  the  sake  of  selling  their  silver.  So 
they  professed  to  attribute  the  panic  to  thousands  cf 
other  things;  they  even  hired  pamphleteers,  speakers 
and  newspaper  writers  to  befog  the  people  and  make  them 
clamor  for  "cheap  money  for  the  poor  man" — a  light- 
weight legal-tender  dollar  rather  than  one  of  full  value. 
They  could  get  enough  people  to  vote 
ifoling'thefgnorant.  ^°^  such  a  thing  because  majorities  are  nat- 
urally ignorant  on  new  questions,  and  in 
this  case  they  were  fooled  by  the  argument  that  cheap 
money  is  good  for  the  poor  man,  because  he  can  get 
more  of  it  for  a  given  amount  of  labor.  Many  people 
were  led  honestly  to  believe  this  an  advantage;  but 
also  many  owing  debts  hoped  to  pay  them  in  light- 
weight dollars,  which,  if  the  government  would  not 
redeem  them,  could  be  had  for  fifty  cents'  worth  of  work 
or  product.  They  did  not  see  that  if  one  man  gets  the 
cheap  money  easier,  other  men  get  it  easier  too;  in 
other  words,  the  man  has  to  pay  it  out  easier — just  as 
much  easier  as  he  gets  it.     So  he  gains  nothing. 


§362]         Money — Some  American  Experience.  371 

On  the  other  hand,  all  creditors  lose;  and  for  every- 
body, it  works  like  such  schemes  as  scamped  labor  (2286) 
or  mistaken  taxation  (464).  All  those  who  produce 
goods  at  first  hand,  like  farmers  and  miners,  get  money 
easier  only  for  their  own  work,  but  they  have  to  pay 
it  out  easier  for  all  work  which  they  buy,  with  its 
added  cost  in  reaching  them  through  many  hands. 
As  an  illustration,  suppose  that,  under  cheap  money, 
a  copper-miner  wants  to  buy  a  copper  kettle.  True, 
he  gets  an  inflated  price  for  the  amount  of  copper  in  it, 
but  he  has  to  pay  back  the  same  inflated  price  for 
that  amount  of  copper,  and,  in  addition,  to  pay  inflated 
prices  for  carrying  the  copper  to  the  smelting-fumace, 
rolling-mill,  kettle-factory,  wholesale  dealer,  retail 
dealer,  and  at  last  to  the  user  himself.  Moreover,  he 
has  to  pay  inflated  prices  for  every  mechanic  and 
exchanger  who  touches  it  on  the  way.  Inflated  cur- 
rency not  only  always  inflates  laborers'  wages,  but 
inflates  the  half-dozen  profits  on  everything  on  its 
way  from  the  farmer  or  miner  or  lumberman,  through 
the  manufacturer  up  to  the  retailer,  so  that  when 
the  laborer  takes  his  inflated  wages  to  buy  his  supplies, 
he  finds  the  supplies  inflated  vastly  more  than  his 
wages  are.  Hence  the  people  who  agitate  most  for 
rag  money  and  light  money,  are  the  very  ones  who 
would  suffer  most  from  it:  a  laborer  gets  an  inflated 
price  for  his  own  one  process,  and  has  to  pay  inflated 
prices  for  a  dozen.  The  case  is  something  like  that 
of  scamped  labor  (228  &)♦ 

If  cheap  money  makes  all   these  people  pay  more 
than  they  get,  it  is  not  easy  to  determine  precisely 
who  makes  the  excess — whose  is  the  profit. 
oco  u/u       ci  In  the  case  of  silver,  apparently  some 

362.  Who  nrofits  .   .,  ,  ,    ,  ^  '       ^i     „    ^     / 

bv  light-weight       ot  it  would  have  to  go  to  inflated  wages 

*'^®  for     silver -miners,     because     owners     of 

mines  would  bid  for  more  of  them;  and  certainly 
much  of  it  goes  to  their  employers  and  the  money- 
changers— just  the  very  people  that  a  dishonest  voter 
would  think  he  was  going  to  cheat  by  paying  his  debts 
in  cheap  money.     The  employer  who  paj-s  out  a  thou- 


372  •  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§362 

sand  dollars  a  daA%  would  seem  likely  to  benefit  more 
by  cheap  money  than  the  man  who  pays  out  only  two 
or  three. 

The  debtors  who  can  cheat  most  with  cheap  money, 
are  not,  after  all,  generally  the  poor  and  ignorant.  That 
is  another  place  where  the  latter  fool  themselves  or 
are  fooled.      The  people  in  debt   are  of  course  those 

oco  Ti,  who   have  the  property,  intelligence  and 

363,  The  poor  are  ,  ,  ii,  1^  i-^t-..ji. 
not  the  debtor        character  needed  to  get  credit.     But  that 

^^^^'  class  has  not  furnished  most  of  the  votes 

for  cheap  silver:  most  of  the  votes  for  cheap  money 
and  for  all  other  attempts  to  make  something  out 
of  nothing,  come  from  the  ignorant  and  irresponsible 
people  who  are  always  in  poverty,  and  always  ready 
to  listen  to  any  deceptive  promise  of  a  short  cut  out 
of  it,  like  socialism  or  communism  or  magical  taxation 
or  trade-union  coercion  or  cheap  money. 

Another  argument  that  got  votes  for  making  light- 
weight silver  dollars  legal  tender,  was  that  silver  is 
naturally  the  money  of  the  poor  because  it  is  cheap, 
and  gold  the  money  of  the    rich.     There  is  no  truth  in 

oc„        iu     1        this,  nor  would  it  be  of  any  consequence 

364.  nor  the  class     .r-.  ,  t,-        •         ^'  ^    , 

that  handles  least  if  it  were  true,  it  IS  Simply  an  appeal  to 
^°''^"  blind    prejudice.     As    a    matter    of    fact, 

while  poor  people  have  to  buy  for.  cash,  people  rich 
enough  to  have  bank  accounts  usually  buy  on  monthly 
or  quarterly  account,  and  usually  pay  those  accounts 
and  all  considerable  debts  with  checks,  and  their  small 
ones  in  silver  change;  it  is  quite  probable  that  they 
do  not  use  as  much  gold  as  people  a  shade  worse  off. 

Now  that  we  have  considered  the  mak- 
0^93!''*''^""^       ing  of  silver,  legal  tender  again,  and  coin- 
ing more  of  it,  and  the  dangers  of  doing 
so,  let  us  see  how  all  that  brought  about  the  panic 
of  '93. 

The  silver  which  the  government  was  forced  to  buy 
(360),  was  paid  for  either  in  notes  from  the  treasury, 
which  were  promises  to  pay  "coin",  and  which  the 
government  might  redeem  in  silver;    or  in  certificates 


§  365  ^]      Money — Some  American  Experience.  373 

that  the  treasury  had  received  and  would  pay  back 
silver  dollars.  These  were  also  paid  for  any  silver 
that  people  might  be  tired  of  carrying  around.  These 
notes  and  certificates  were  not  good  money,  but  for 
the  time  they  served  the  purpose,  because  even  if  the 
government  paid  silver  dollars  for  them,  it  was  ready 
to  pay  the  silver  dollars  in  gold.  The  trouble  was 
that  there  got  to  be  so  many  of  the  treasury  notes 
and  silver  certificates,  that  people  grew  afraid  that 
the  government  would  not  long  be  able  to  pay  gold 
for  the  silver  dollars  which  the  paper  represented. 
ocR/„,  D    •.  The    first    noticeable    effect    was    that 

365  (a).  Begins  ,        .        „  ,  .  ^  . 

with  alarm  in        people  in  liuropc  who  owucd  our  bonds 
"''°'"^'  and  stocks,  got  frightened  lest  soon  they 

might  not  be  able  to  get  gold  for  them,  and  began  to 
send  them  here  for  sale.  Those  "people  in  Europe" 
had  invested  money  here  with  our  corporations,  to 
build  railroads  and  open  mines  and  do  many  other 
things,  or  had  lent  us  money  to  carry  on  the  War  for 
the  Union.  When  they  got  frightened  lest  they  should 
be  paid  in  silver,  and  sent  the  stocks  and  bonds  back 
again  to  be  sold,  a  large  part  of  the  money  paid  to 
the  brokers  for  the  bonds  was  treasury  notes  and  silver 
certificates.  These  would  not  be  taken  in  Europe:  so 
importers  went  to  the  treasury  for  gold.  People  here 
soon  began  to  join  in  the  fear  of  the  foreign  bond- 
holders that  government  could  not  continue  to  pay 
gold,  and,  remembering  the  war  experience  with  the 
greenbacks,  began  to  expect  that  the  silver  dollar 
and  most  of  the  government  paper  money  would  fall 
in  value,  so  that  a  man  with  a  dollar  due  him  could 
really  get  but  fifty  cents. 

365  r6j.  Business  This  made  business  dull,  loans  difficult 
suffers,  g^j^^  money  scarce.     A  large  share  of  busi- 

ness is  done  on  borrowed  money  and  credit  sales,  and 
people  were  afraid  to  lend  a  dollar  or  give  credit  for 
one,  when  there  was  a  large  chance  of  getting  only 
fifty  cents  back.  This  led  to  the  stopping  of  many 
works,  shutting  of  many  mills,  and  dullness  among  the 
dealers.     All  this  threw  many  people  out  of  employ- 


374  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [365  b 

ment.  True,  the  bankers  and  merchants  could  have 
lent  gold  and  sold  goods  under  an  agreement  to  get 
back  gold,  but  people  will  not  bother  with  such  details  in 
365 cc)  Kansas  Ordinary  transactions,  and  moreover,  the 
tries  a  new  way  state  of  Ivansas  oncc  declared  such  agree- 
0/  •bleeding  .  ^ignts  illegal,  and  other  states  might  do 
the  same:  so  people  did  not  like  the  risk.  Moreover, 
when  business  is  bad,  people  who  really  want  to  pay 
back  just  what  they -get,  may  not  be  able  to. 
365(d).  Hoarding  Not  Only  was  business  dull,  but  money 
begins.  -^g^s  scarce.     ]\Iany  people  getting  money  in 

hand,  did  not  put  it  in  business  or  in  the  banks,  where 
it  could  be  lent  out,  but  locked  it  up.  They  were 
afraid  that  the  banks  might  be  able  to  get  back  only 
light-weight  silver  dollars  where  they  had  lent  gold 
ones,  and  would  break;  and  people  also  feared  that 
if  they  did  not  put  the  money  in  banks,  but  bought 
property,  if  business  got  disturbed  by  poor  money,  the 
property  might  shrink  in  value  so  that  they  could 
not  get  the  money  out  again. 

It    is    bv    no    means    exclusivelv    the 
Indite Sor!"'"'''  moncy  of  the  rich  that  goes  if  the  banks 

fail.  A  large  part  of  all  the  money  in 
banks,  is  in  the  savings-banks,  and  that  is  almost  entirely 
the  money  of  the  poor  (141). 

Popular  fear  for  the  safety  of  banks  and  investments 
grows  with  what  it  feeds  upon,  until  it  becomes  a 
regular  panic,  when  people  are  so  afraid  of  a  fall  in 
prices,  that  they  begin  to  throw  away  their  stocks  and 
bonds  for  anything  they  will  bring.  In  the  pS,nic  of  '93, 
people   threw   away   their   stocks   and   bonds   at   great 

sacrifices.  The  President  called  a  special 
ItopTth^'^nic!"*  session  of  Congress,  and,  after  great  trouble, 

got  enacted  a  law  repealing  the  require- 
ment passed  under  the  previous  administration,  that  the 
treasury  should  buy  four  million  five  hundred  thousand 
ounces  of  silver  a  month. 

The  absurdity  of  the  repealed  law  has  been  strikingly 
illustrated  in  the  fact  that  notwithstanding  the  increase 
in  population  and  business — the  latter  especially  after 


§366]        Money — Some  Americmi  Experience.  375 

1903,  the  supply  of  silver  that  the  government  had 
accumulated  before  it  stopped  buying  in  1893,  obviated 
the  necessity  of  buying  any  more  for  the  mints  until 
August,  1906. 

Tho  that  silver  was  lying  idle  in  the  treasury,  in  a 
sense  it  was  not  idle:  for,  being  paid  for  in  notes  of  the 
treasury,  it  was  a  guarantee  for  these  notes  (378).  But 
its  fluctuating  price  made  it  a  very  unsteady  guarantee, 
and  each  month's  purchases  of  silver  increased  the  notes 
and,  consequently,  the  danger  that  they  could  be 
redeemed  only  in  the  silver.  Such  uncertain  banking 
showed  our  government  to  be  controlled  either  by 
lunatics  or  by  men  who  would  stop  at  nothing  to  sell 
their  silver,  and  this  did  as  much  to  hurt  our  credit,  and 
lead  the  Europeans  to  sell  our  securities,  as  did  the 
mere  fear  that  the  treasury  could  not  pay  gold  for  all 
its  notes. 

Stopping  the  silver  purchases  stopped  the  panic.  In 
spite  of  the  blows  business  had  been  stunned  by,  within 
three  months  j^eople,  from  their  hoards,  increased  the 
money  in  the  national  banks  ten  jjer  cent.,  not  to  speak 
of  what  went  into  savings-banks,  state  banks  and  private 
banks;  but  even  after  President  Cleveland  stopped 
the  panic,  business  did  not  revive  for  a  year  or  more, 
until  he  had  been  obliged  to  buy  gold  at  heavy  rates 
to  pay  government  notes  with,  and  pay  for  the  gold  in 
government  bonds,  and  had  satisfied  people  that  he 
would  do  so  whenever  necessary.  Then  factories  started 
up,  wages  increased,  wheat  and  cotton  advanced  in 
price,  and  everything  looked  hopeful. 

Yet  it  was  frightfully  expensive  for 
leauycost!  "*  President  Cleveland  to  redeem  the  token- 
money  with  gold  bought  by  government 
bonds.  But  he  did  it  because  the  notes  were  out, 
366.  Government  ^^^  Congress  was  not  wise  or  honest 
Banking.  enough  to  pay  them  off  and  burn  them  up. 

Consequently  when  anybody  wanted  gold  for  foreign 
shipment  or  the  arts,  instead  of  going  to  a  dealer  for 
it,  and  paying  a  little  commission,  he  went  to  the  govern- 
ment and  got  it  without  commission — that  is  to  say: 


37^  The  Prouwtion  of  Convenience.  [§  366 

at  the  expense  of  all  the  people.  In  other  words,  it 
was  at  the  expense  of  the  people  that  the  greenbacks 
were  kept  in  circulation,  in  order  that  government 
might  do,  without  charge,  the  business  of  the  very 
"goldbug"  that  the  ignorant  voter  so  hates. 

The  law  does  not  directly  oblige  the  government  to 
do  all  this  brokerage  business.  But  it  was  not  avoided, 
because  it  was  much  less  expensive  to  do  it  than  it  would 
have  been  to  repeat  the  panic  of  '93.  We  have  had  to 
pay  for  letting  people  who  had  silver  for  sale,  fool 
ignorant  voters  into  the  belief  that  if  they  would  only 
use  half  the  value  of  silver  that  they  did  of  gold,  in  a 
dollar,  they  could  have  twice  as  many  dollars,  and  all 
of  them  just  as  good. 

The  hopefulness  occasioned  by  Mr. 
367.  "16  to  1."  Cleveland's  polic3^  continued  until  the 
silver  men  again  began  to  agitate  for  the 
presidential  election  of  '96,  and  to  demand  unlimited 
coinage  of  a  legal-tender  dollar,  whose  weight  should 
bear,  to  that  of  a  gold  dollar,  the  ratio  of  "16  to  i  ". 
This  they  made  their  campaign  motto.  The  ratio  of 
actual  value  was  about  32  to  i.  Fear  of  the  success 
of  this  scheme  made  things  dull  again.  Its  defeat 
restored  confidence,  and  the  country  entered  upon  the 
greatest  period  of  prosperity  it  has  ever  known — one 
that  even  the  Spanish  and  Philippine  wars  could  inter- 
rupt but  for  a  moment.  But  even  the  defeat  of  the 
silverites  in  '96  did  not  restore  confidence  immediately, 
because  the  treasury  gold  for  redeeming  silver  dollars 
remained  for  some  time  scant;  and  the  laws  were  so 
indefinite  that  the  government  might  be  thrown  upon 
a  silver  basis  by  any  great  financial  disturbance,  such 
as  those  Mr.  Cleveland  had  issued  bonds  against.  People 
felt  afraid  to  invest  dollars  worth  gold,  in  enterprises 
that  might  pay  them  only  dollars  worth  silver.  So 
business  continued  dull  until  1S98.  Then  the  enormous 
mechanical  genius  of  our  people  had  been  gradually 
enabling  us  to  send  Europe  many  manufactured  articles 
cheaper  than  they  could  be  made  there.     Altho   our 


§  369]         Money — Some  American  Experience.  377 

high  tariff  makes  prices  here  higher  than  in  Europe, 
many  of  our  manufacturers  are  selhng  to  Europe  at 
low  prices,  because  they  must  compete  there.  Yet  they 
sell  here  at  high  ones,  because  the  tariff  shuts  out 
European  competition,  and  puts  the  difference  collected 
out  of  our  people,  into  the  manufacturers'  pockets. 
All  this  is  despite  the  elaborate  theory  worked  out 
when  we  were  treating  of  distribution — that  competi- 
tion and  weak  producers  keep  prices  down,  and  it  well 
illustrates  one  beauty  of  "Protection":  to  the  extent 
of  the  duty,  and  at  the  expense  of  the  rest  of  the  people, 
the  government  "protects"  the  manufacturer  from  the 
necessity  of  competition,  and  the  danger  of  incom- 
petency; but  ai  the  same  time  it  "protects"  (?)  the 
public  from  the  advantages  of  competition  (146-T48  d) 
and  makes  us  more  open  to  the  dangers  of  incompetency. 

„-o   I         A  But  to  return  to  our   light -silver-dollar 

368.   Improved  .  t-.      •  ^11 

trade  balance  experience.     Busmess  conndence  began  to 

supplies  gold.  appear  again  in  1 89  8 .  Despite  the  danger- 
ous state  of  the  law,  two  causes  sent  us  enormous 
quantities  of  gold :  our  manufacturers  had  begun  to  sell 
increasing  quantities  in  Europe,  and  we  had  enormous 
crops  in  '97  and  '98  which  a  scarcity  in  Europe  compelled 
people  there  to  pay  us  high  prices  for.  These  agencies 
filled  our  treasury  so  that  it  seemed  safe  against  any 
accident  in  sight. 

But  suppose  our  crops  were  to  fail  for  a  couple  of 
seasons,  and  Europe  were  to  have  good  ones,  or  find 
good  ones  in  Asia,  Africa  or  Australia ;  and  suppose,  too, 
that  Germany,  with  her  splendid  technical  education, 
were  to  drive  our  manufacturers  out  of  Europe,  our  gold- 
369  B  t  th  t  supply  would  probably  run  down  to  the 
cannot  be  depended  point  where  Mr.  Cleveland  had  to  sell  bonds 
"''°"'  to  increase  it,  and  we  might  be  rushed  again 

to  the  brink  of  national  bankruptcy — or  over  the  brink. 
But  we  have  now  a  defence  against  that,  in  the  Act  of 
March  19,  1900,  which  declares  it  to  be  the  country's 
policy  to  pay  gold,  and  provides  by  legislation  the 
means  for  doing  it  which  Mr.  Cleveland  took  the  respon- 
sibility of  providing  himself.     Yet  tho  that  act  declares 


378  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  369 

it  the  policy  of  the  country  to  keep  all  its  money  on  a 
par  with  gold,  it  does  not  prescribe  any  method  for 
doing  so,  or  put  the  responsibility  for  doing  so  on  any- 
body's shoulders ;  it  leaves  room  to  pay  in  silver,  current 
expenses  of  the  government  averaging  over  $1,500,000 
a  day,  and  $700,000,000  bonds,  principal  and  interest, 
and  fastens  no  responsibility  to  redeem  that  silver 
on  anybody.  A  secretary  of  the  treasury  could  do  it 
if  he  wished,  or  he  oould  find  abundant  pretexts  for 
not  doing  it.  A  President  could  order  him  to  do  it  or 
not  to  do  it.  What  is  of  more  importance :  any  declara- 
tion of  Congress  can  easily  be  set  aside  by  a  future  Con- 
gress, if  elected  by  the  people  to  do  so.  Despite  the 
Act  of  March,  1900,  the  Democratic  nominations  later 
in  the  year  threatened  as  much  as  those  of  1896.  They 
distinctly  interrupted  business,  but  the  enormous  re- 
vival after  their  defeat,  shows  that  at  least  the  people 
able  to  conduct  business,  at  last  understand  the  matter. 
The  election  of  1900  confirmed  the  favorable  outlook, 
and  in  that  of  1904,  money  questions  were  no  longer  a 
distinct  issue.  But  they  are  apt  to  crop  up  again,  espe- 
cially when  the  hard  experience  we  have  recounted  grad- 
ually drops  out  of  memory.  The  silver  craze  was  not 
the  first  time  that  people  have  attempted  to  get  rich  in 
some  such  way,  nor  will  it  be  the  last.  The  ignorant 
are  all  the  while  trying  some  such  decep- 
370.  Light-weight    tive   Scheme   for   getting   rich   by   magic. 

silver  money  no  o  rx        j.i  i  -x  j 

new  scheme,  boon  after  the  war,  when  it  was  proposed 

to  pay  off  the  greenbacks,  and  even  when 
the  confidence  that  they  would  be  paid  had  brought 
them  back  to  even  value,  from  a  value  of  forty  gold 
dollars  for  a  hundred  greenback  ones,  there  were  still 
people  who  objected  to  having  the  greenbacks  paid, 
and  wanted  enough  more  issued  to  fill  evey  man's 
pockets.  There  was  no  explanation  of  how  these 
people  expected  to  get  the  greenbacks  into  every  man's 
pockets,  or  of  why  they  would  not  be  as  well  off  if  they 
would  set  to  work  and  get  a  corresponding  amount 
of  gold  into  their  pockets.  Work  did  not  enter  into 
their  calculations.     They  had  a  thousand  schemes,  all 


§37°]        Mojtey — Some  American  Experience.  379 

of  which  disguised  some  plan  for  really  making  the 
government  give  greenbacks  to  all  who  wanted  them; 
and  of  course  they  did  not  realize  that  doing  so  would 
make  the  greenbacks  as  worthless  as  the  Colonial  and 
Confederate  monev. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

MONEY    (continued). 

Needs  for  the  FtUtire. 

Despots  have  sometimes  made  themselves  rich  by 
debasing  the  currency  and  making  the  people  take 
it  at  full  value;  but  not  often,  if  ever  before,  have  a 
people  thought,  like  many  of  ours,  that  they  could  get 
rich  by  debasing  their  own  currency.  Of  course  the 
best  safeguard  against  all  such  schemes  among  the 
people,  is  not  to  have  ignorant  voters.  But  probably 
371.  The  best  ^ot  many  men  in  America — white  men  at 
safeguard.  least — will  ever  be  deprived  of  their  votes. 

So  our  only  way  of  having  no  ignorant  voters  is  to 
educate  them  so  there  will  be  no  ignorant.  What  most 
needs  to  be  taught  about  money,  is  that  there  is  no 
way  to  make  a  dollar  good  for  a  hundred  cents'  worth 
of  anything  else,  but  by  putting  a  hundred  cents'  worth 
of  something  into  the  dollar  itself,  or  by  being  ready 
at  a  moment's  notice  to  give  a  hundred  cents'  worth 
of  something  for  it.  These  methods  are  not  equally 
convenient :  for  it  is  much  easier  to  handle  considerable 
amounts  in  paper  than  in  coin,  or  to  handle  a  silver 
dollar  holding  only  fifty  cents'  worth  of  silver,  than  to 
handle  one  twice  as  heavy. 

Nor  are  the  two  methods  equally  safe.  Silver  prob- 
ably deceives  more.  Perfect  safety  lies  in  having  the 
full  value  in  the  dollar  itself:  then  no  misfortune  or 
foolishness  or  rascality  can  depreciate  it.    After  all,  there 

380 


§  374]  Money — Needs  for  the  Future.  381 

372.  The  safest  is  no  absolutely  safe  material  for  money, 
"'o"6y-  because   new  discoveries    may  reduce  the 

value  of  gold  itself;  but  gold  is  the  safest  there  is, 
and  safe  enough  for  ordinary  practice.  But,  as  already 
suggested,  that  would  make  handling  large  sums  so 
inconvenient,  that  the  world  is  agreed  to  sacrifice  ideal 
safety  for  real  convenience. 

Balancing  the  convenience  of  paper  money  or  light 
silver  money,  against  its  dangers,  what  is  the  best 
money  depends  on  a  good  many  things.  Silver  has 
373  P  b  tt  some  intrinsic  value,  which  the  paper  has 
than  light-weight  not,  and  it  has  vastly  more  durability; 
^'  ^*"^'  but  on  the  other  hand,  the  lack  of  dura- 

bility in  paper  does  not  count  for  much,  as  it  is  easy 
to  issue  a  new  note  for  a  spoiled  one.  But  the  very 
fact  that  silver  has  some  intrinsic  value,  confuses  igno- 
rant people,  and  even  tends  to  make  them  dishonest. 
Paper  is  really  much  more  honest  money  than  silver: 
nobody  can  take  it  for  anything  which  it  is  not.  The 
use  of  it  in  this  country  has  brought  great  losses  and 
disasters,  but  the  country  has  learned  a  great  deal 
from  them.  The  people  could  not  long  have  been  fooled 
with  paper  as  they  have  been  fooled  with  silver. 
Paper  has  not  brought  any  trouble  in  England  in 
recent  times;  but  there,  ignorant  people  are  much 
more  under  the  influence  of  people  of  education  than 
they  are  here,  and  England  has  no  paper  money  under 
twenty-five  dollars. 

Probably  if  there  had  been  no  green- 
u/rge  bfils!^  '"  backs  Under  twenty-five  dollars,  most  of 
the  people  who  made  trouble  about  them 
after  the  Vv^ar,  would  have  known  so  little  about  them 
that  there  would  have  been  no  trouble.  Even  if  the 
money-schemes  for  making  everybody  rich,  are  started 
for  selfish  reasons  by  able  men,  and  even  if  such  men 
are  able  for  a  time  to  fool  a  few  other  able  men  new 
to  the  subject,  the  schemes  depend  for  their  principal 
following  upon  the  people  who  have  too  little  judg- 
ment to  see  twenty-five  dollars  often.  The  only  thing 
to   make   our   paper   silver   certificates    safe   under   all 


382  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  375 

probable  conditions,  is  to  put  a  dollar's 
siiver^erlific^afes,  worth  of  silver  into  the  silver  dollar,  and- 
call  in  all  those  which  contain  less.  Simply 
to  take  away  its  legal-tender  character,  would  con- 
tract the  currency  and  destroy  confidence,  so  that 
many  people  could  not  get  money  enough  to  pay  their 
debts,  and  much  bankruptcy  would  follow.  It  would 
contract  the  currency  by  two  temporary  strictures: 
first,  people  would  be  slow  to  accept  silver  dollars  or 
silver  certificates :  so  they  would  go  to  the  treasury  for^ 
redemption.  Next,  as  the  treasury  is  not  at  all  likely 
to  have  enough  other  money  to  redeem  them,  it  would 
have  to  pay  out  bonds  to  meet  part  of  them,  and  the 
currency  it  would  take  in  place  of  bonds  would  make 
just  that  much  less  for  business  use,  until  it  should 
be  paid  out  again.  It  would  destroy  confidence,  be- 
cause, the  treasury  gold  supply  being  gone  to  redeem 
the  silver  currency  and  certificates,  the  treasury  would 
be  in  the  condition  of  a  man  without  money  in  his 
pockets  or  in  bank.  He  might  need  it  before  he  would 
have  time  to  borrow  it,  and,  if  everybody  knew  his 
plight,  would  probably  have  to  borrow  at  heavy  ex- 
pense, as  Mr.  Cleveland  did. 

To  redeem  the  silver  currency  in  new  legal-tender 
greenbacks,  would  meet  most  of  the  difficulties,  if 
government  had  gold  on  hand  to  pay  the  greenbacks 
as  wanted.  But  there  is  a  difficulty  that  it  would  not 
376  Objections  meet:  the  use  of  greenbacks  keeps  the 
to  ail  government  government  in  the  banking  business,  and 
"°*^5'  as  long  as  it  is,  the  money  system  of  the 

country  is  under  the  control  of  politics,  and  subject 
to  the  attacks  of  the  politicians  which  have  kept  busi- 
ness disturbed  for  over  forty  years,  since  government 
went  into  that  business  during  the  civil  war. 

Yet  government  can  be  got  out  of  the  banking  busi- 
ness without  diminishing  the  volume  of  money,  and  so 
contracting  the  currency.  The  notes  of  private  banks, 
properly  regulated,  could  replace  the  government  notes, 
and  there  is  no  objection  to  the  government  continuing 
to  coin  money  (if  it  coins  only  honest  money)  as  the  Con- 


§  377  ^]  Money — Needs  for  the  Future.  383 

stitution  requires:  so  it  is  only  necessary  to  provide 
for  that  portion  of  the  money  which  is  not  coin,  or, 
at  least,  not  honest  coin.  The  government  mints  can- 
not supply  all  the  money  needed,  for  several  reasons: 
377.  Yet  coin  in-  i^  the  first  place,  prices  depend  on  the 
sufficient,  amount  of  money  in  circulation,  and  are 

now  fixed  on  a  basis  of  much  more  money  than  the 
coin;  to  get  back  to  coin  by  retiring  the  other  money, 
even  gradually,  would  contract  prices  so  that  a  corpora- 
tion having  to  pay  a  million  dollars' worth  of  bonds  fifty 
years  hence,  would  find  a  million  dollars  of  its  assets,  at 
present  values,  fallen  to  probably  a  third  of  that  price, 
while  its  debts  would  not  have  shrunk  at  all :  that  means 
inability  to  pay  them.  But  instead  of  getting  down  to 
the  coin  we  have,  why  not  let  government  coin  more,  as 
fast  as  it  retires  light  silver  and  its  other  bad  money? 
Because  the  demand  for  so  much  more  gold  would 
raise  its  price,  so  that  the  farmer  and  manufacturer 
and  miner  and  laborers  of  all  kinds  would  have  to 
give  more  of  their  products  to  enable  the  government 
to  get  gold — taxes  would  rise.  Another  objection 
377  (a)  and  resulting   from,    or    at    least    closely    con- 

ineiastic,  ncctcd    with,    the    last,    is    that    currency 

only  in  coin  is  very  inelastic.  It  is  impossible  to  buy 
much  gold,  especially  suddenly,  without  raising  the 
price  (that  is  to  say:  making  it  exchange  for  more 
of  other  things) ;  and  conversely,  it  is  of  course  impos- 
sible to  throw  much  onto  the  market,  in  coin  or  in 
any  other  shape,  without  lowering  the  price  (that  is 
to  say :  making  it  exchange  for  less  of  other  things) : 
so  it  would  be  very  hard  to  keep  a  coin  currency  just 
equal  to  the  varying  needs  of  business. 

Moreover,  an  exclusively  coin  currency  is  extravagant. 
To  have  enough  gold  for  active  times,  would  mean 
to  keep  it  idle  in  inactive  times,  and  so  lose  interest 
377  (b).  and  eats  On  it.  Busincss  requires  an  elastic  cur- 
up  interest.  rcncy :    while  Nature  and  men  are  taking 

their  winter  rest — no  crops  produced,  little  building 
and  mining,  little  travel — there  is  little  business,  and 
little    currency    is    needed.      In  the  spring,   as   things 


384  The  Protnotion  of  Convenience.  [§  377  ^ 

wake  up,  more  is  needed,  and  as  fall  approaches, 
and  the  farmer  has  to  pay  labor  to  gather  his  crops, 
and  the  dealer  has  to  pay  the  farmer,  and  the  rail- 
roads and  merchants  are  busy  with  the  crops,  a  great 
deal  more  money  is  kept  in  use.  A  mere  coin  currency 
cannot  expand  and  contract  to  meet  these  conditions. 
An  exclusively  coin  currency,  then,  is  open  to  many 
objections  that  can  be  met  only  by  a  paper  cur- 
rency. And  yet  the  burden  of  our  song  has  been 
that  a  paper  currency  is  dangerous.  But  it  is  not 
dangerous    if    the    people    generally    can    be    made    to 

„,„  r    A  realize  that  it  is:    because  then  it  would 

378,  Good  paper      ,  ,  r         a 

currency  pref-        be   taken   care   01.     A  paper   currency   is 

^^^  ^'  safe  if  its  promise  to  pay  is  certain;  and 

dangerous  only  if,   as  in  the   civil  war,   it   cannot  be 

redeemed  in  coin  when  required. 

Beside  the  reasons  already  given  for  not  letting  the 
coin  go  into  use  at  once,  instead  of  keeping  it  to  redeem 
the  paper,  is  the  very  important  one  that  experience 
has  shown  that  it  is  safe,  even  in  ordinary  banking,  to 
let  out  four  dollars  of  paper  for  every  dollar  of  coin  in 
hand.  If  people  know  that  the  banker  has  a  reason- 
able amount  of  coin  and  other  value  to  meet  the  paper, 
not  all  of  the  paper  would  ever  be  presented  for  redemp- 
tion at  once.  People  are  like  the  Dutchman  who  got 
frightened  and  went  to  the  bank  for  his  money.  As 
soon  as  it  was  offered  him,  he  told  them  to  keep  it: 
"Yen  you  got  him,  I  no  vant  him:  ven  5'ou  don't 
got  him,  I  vant  him." 

It  is  not  meant  to  imply  that  it  is  safe  for  a  bank 
worth  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  issue  notes  for 
four  hundred  thousand:  nobody  should  have  out  obli- 
gations greater  than  assets,  but  rather  considerably  less, 
to  leave  a  margin  for  accidents.  But  if  a  bank  has  out 
four  hundred  thousand  of  notes,  and  no  other  obliga- 
tion, it  can  safely  keep  all  of  its  property  above  one 
hundred  thousand,  in  marketable  bonds  or  good  com- 
mercial paper  or  any  other  good  "quick"  (i.e.,  quickly 
sellable)  security  that  will  pay  it  interest.  If  it  can 
lend  four  hundred  thousand  dollars,  and  get  interest 


§  380]  Money — Needs  for  the  Future.  38 5 

on  it,  by  keeping  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  idle 
in  its  vaults,  that  one  hundred  thousand  will  really 
be  earning  fourfold  interest;  and  that,  with  the  in- 
terest on  the  three  hundred  thousand  in  securities, 
makes  the  bank  get  interest  on  seven  hundred  thousand 
while  it  has  a  capital  of  only  four  hundred  thousand. 
Out  of  this,  however,  it  must  pay  expenses,  and  unless 
it  manages  well,  it  may  have  no  profit  after  all. 

It  may  very  naturally  be  asked:  Why  then  should 
not  all  the  people  participate  in  this  advantage,  in  the 
shape  of  lowered  taxation,  by  keeping  the  government 
in  the  banking  business  of  issuing  notes?  For  the 
same  reason  that,  as  we  saw  (236  b,  236  c), 
government?*^™'"  government  should  not  be  put  in  the 
manufacturing  business.  It  would  leave 
to  politicians  with  pulls,  the  work  that  should  be  done 
by  men  fitted  for  it  by  nature,  and  put  in  place  by 
natural  selection;  and  it  would  take  away  from  the 
community  the  enormous  advantage  of  having  its 
banking  done  by  such  men  under  the  stimulus  of  com- 
petition and  personal  reward. 

A  word  more  regarding  the  elasticity  of  the  paper 
currency.  Of  course  the  bank  must  lend  this  cur- 
rency in  order  to  get  interest  on  it.  When  the  country 
is  very  busy,  people  will  borrow  it  all;  when  business 
is  dull  they  will  not  need  it,  and  will  pay  their  maturing 
notes,  and'  the  bank  will  have  to  take  its  currency  back. 
Then,  of  course,  it  fails  to  gain  interest  on  it,  and  on 
its  idle  coin  too ;   but  the  paper  costs  nothing. 

380.  Essentials  of  Notwithstanding  all  that  has  been  said 
banknotes.  "Wild-  in  favor  of  a  non-govemment  paper  cur- 
cat  money.  rency,  the  country  has  tried  private  bank- 
notes, and  found  them  wanting.  But  this  was  largely 
because  they  were  issued  on  the  authority  of  individual 
states,  and  especially  of  some  of  the  newer  states, 
where  political  organization  was  very  primitive,  and  the 
regulations  were  primitive  and  primitively  enforced. 
If  anybody  proposes  to  put  paper  in  general  circulation, 
it  is  essential  that  it  should  be  done  under  conditions 


386  TJie  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  380 

to  protect  against  general  harm.  Under  the  imperfect 
conditions  alluded  to,  a  great  many  notes  were  spread 
over  the  country  without  enough  coin  and  other  assets 
behind  them  to  make  them  safe ;  and  many  of  the  notes 
from  the  poorer  and  more  provincial  banks  were  so 
poorly  engraved  and  printed  that  it  was  easy  to  counter- 
feit them.  As  a  result,  nobody  knew  whether  most  of 
the  money  offered  him  was  good  or  not.  People  were 
constantly  getting  "stuck"  with  bad  notes,  as  they 
sometimes  are  with  pewter  coin.  It  became  worth 
while  to  issue  frequent  pamphlets — "  Banknote  Guides  ", 
"Counterfeit  Detectors",  etc.,  etc.,  and  every  shop- 
keeper had  to  keep  one,  and  before  accepting  money 
that  he  did  not  know  well,  turn  to  his  pamphlet  for 
description  and  advice. 

One  of  the  good  things  blown  by  the  ill  winds  of 
the  great  civil  war  and  its  depreciated  greenbacks, 
was  the  disappearance  of  the  old  "rag  money":  they 
blew  it  out  of  circulation.  Everybody  understood  a 
greenback,  it  was  the  same  thing  the  country  over — 
well  made  (even  if  ugly)  and  hard  to  counterfeit.  Tho  it 
was  worth  at  one  time  but  forty  cents  on  a  dollar,  people 
knew  what  it  was  worth  without  turning  to  a  "Guide" 
or  "Detector",  and  soon  it  drove  the  private  rag  money 
out  of  existence.  That,  by  the  way,  was  an  apparent 
(but  only  apparent)  contradiction  of  the  famous  ' '  Gresh- 
am's  law",  that  the  worse  money  always  drives  out 
the  better.  But  it  cannot  be  gone  into  farther  here. 
To  summarize  our  conclusions  regarding  the  country's 
needs.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  always  a  need  of 
plenty  of  money — more  even,  when  business  is  brisk, 
than  all  the  gold  coin  in  the  country.  In  the  second 
place,  it  should  be  supplied  under  regulations  from  the 
United  States  Government,  not  the  state  governments, 
so  that  the  money  will  be  the  same  throughout  the 
country. 

The  regulations  should  be:    first,  secure 

381,  Essentials  of    ^]-^^^  nobody  not  of  proved  character  and 

ability  can  start  a  bank  01  issue;    second, 

that  no  more  notes  shall  be  issued  than  there  are  good 


§  382]  Money — Needs  for  the  Future.  3S7 

quick  assets  (377  />)  on  hand  for  redemption  of,  at  least 
one  fourth  of  which  assets  shall  be  gold  coin;  third,  that 
these  notes  shall  conform  to  some  good  definite  standards 
of  workmanship — perhaps  that  they  shall  be  provided 
by  government;  only,  as  we  have  seen  and  shall  see 
further,  we  need  to  be  very  cautious  in  what  we  trust 
government  to  provide ;  (The  mere  mechanical  furnishing 
of  these  notes  would  not,  of  course,  be  "going  into  the 
banking  business";)  fourth,  that  a  limit  for  ordinary 
issues  shall  be  fixed,  and  all  beyond  that  limit  taxed 
so  as  to  force  their  retirement  when  not  really  needed; 
fifth,  that  each  bank  shall  have  arrangements  for 
redemption  at  several  centres,  so  as  to  facilitate  retire- 
ment; sixth,  that  government  examiners  shall  visit  the 
banks  unannounced,  at  frequent  intervals,  to  see  that 
the  regulations  are  complied  with;  seventh,  that  such 
penalties  shall  follow  infringement  of  regulations  as  to 
make  infringement  extremely  improbable. 

There  are  those  who  favor  a  single  central  bank 
of  issue,  as  is  virtually  the  case  in  England;  but  that 
does  not  seem  adapted  to  our  large  country,  and  there 
are  other  objections  which  cannot  be  gone  into  here. 
Humanity  is  not  wise  enough  and  careful  enough  yet 
to  make  us  sure  that  any  arrangements  are  going  to 
work  perfectly;  but  under  those  suggested,  the  law  of 
demand  and  supply  would  probably  keep  the  currency 
as  nearly  adjusted  to  requirements  as  anything  is  at  the 
present  stage  of  human  progress.  If  there  were  not 
enough,  the  demand  for  more  would  make  profits  great 
enough  to  tempt  more  people  into  issuing  it;  and  if 
there  were  too  much,  the  portion  uncalled  for  would  be 
retired,  and  the  capital  behind  it  be  turned  into  things 
in  more  demand. 

Under  present  arrangements  the  bank 
elastiA^urrencyf  cannot  issue  more,  because  when  there  is 
a  demand  for  more,  the  only  thing  back 
of  our  present  banknotes  is  United  States  bonds, 
which  are  admirable  as  far  as  they  go,  but  they  do 
not  go  far  enough — there  are  not  enough  of  them,  and 
they  pay  very  low  interest;    besides,  if  a  bank  wants 


3SS  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  3S2 

to  enlarge  its  circulation  now,  it  must  go  through  an 
enormous  amount  of  red  tape,  including  buying  a  lot 
of  government  bonds,  and  sending  to  Washington  for 
notes,  and  waiting  till  they  are  engraved.  While  all 
this  is  going  on,  a  panic  could  wreak  destruction.  It 
would  therefore  be  well  to  substitute  for  United  States 
bonds,  all  sectirities  in  the  country  that  an  able  commis- 
sion (best,  perhaps,  appointed  by  the  banks  themselves) 
should  pronounce  safe  for  the  purpose  (they  would 
not  be  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  whole),  such 
commission  to  revise  its  list  at  frequent  intervals,  and 
banks  to  shift  their  securities  accordingly. 

Then  to  get  the  notes  into  circulation,  it  would  only 
be  necessary  for  any  man  who  has  the  securities,  to 
take  them  to  bank  and  borrow  banknotes  on  them 
up  to  within  a  reasonable  limit  of  their  face  value; 
then  when  his  need  is  over,  he  could  take  the  notes 
back  and  get  his  securities. 

Commercial  paper  of  high  quality  would  not  be 
available  to  base  the  notes  on,  even  tho  there  is  more 
of  it  when  business  is  brisk,  and  less  when  business  is 
slow,  because  it  would  be  very  difficult  to  be  sure  that 
such  paper,  when  offered,  was  for  actual  goods  sold; 
and  an  elastic  currency  would  lead  to  inflation  of  values 
unless  it  were  carefully  limited  to  a  basis  of  actual 
property.  So  far  as  currency  might  be  based  on 
accommodation  paper,  it  would,  of  course,  be  pure 
inflation,  and  might  go  on  until  it  should  collapse 
like  an  exploded  balloon.  But  even  if  it  were  based 
on  genuine  commercial  paper,  the  producer  of  raw 
material  might  get  currency  on  the  note  given  him 
by  the  manufacturer,  the  manufacturer  might  get  it 
on  his  jobber's  note,  the  jobber  on  the  retailer's,  and 
the  retailer — a  grocer,  for  instance,  on  the  consumer's; 
so  the  same  raw  material  might  originate  currency 
four  times — on  the  notes  received  by  the  banks  from 
the  raw-material  man,  the  manufacturer,  the  jobber 
and  the  retailer;  value  added  by  the  manufacturer 
might  originate  currency  three  times — on  his  jobber's 
note,  and  the  retailer's  and  the  consumer's;    the  job- 


§  3^3  ^]  Money— Needs  for  the  Future.  389 

ber's  service,  twice;  and  the  retailer's,  once — an  aggre- 
gate of  ten  issues  of  currency  where  there  would  be  a 
sound  basis  for  only  three  actual  values  accumulated — 
the  raw  material,  the  manufacturer's,  the  jobber's. 
It  seems  therefore  that  a  safe  issue  of  currency  based 
on  commercial  paper  would  be  practically  impossible. 
The  retailer's  note  could  not  represent  a  value  to 
base  currency  on:  because  even  if  the  goods  in  con- 
sumers' hands  are  not — like  food,  actually  destroyed, 
their  commercial  value  as  a  basis  for  currency,  is  gone 
as  soon  as  they  are  in  consumers'  hands.  Even  if 
they  endure,  like  furniture  or  jewelry,  they  at  once 
become  "second-hand". 

383.  The  farmer's  In  the  foregoing  analysis,  by  the  way, 
"^^''^  the  farmer's  demand  that  he  shall  have  a 

chance  too,  as  well  as  the  "bloated  bondholder" — 
that  currency  shall  be  issued  based  on  his  farm,  not 
merely  on  coin,  or  even  on  bonds  that  can  be  sold  at  a 
moment's  notice  on  the  stock  exchanges,  is  counter  to 
the  requirement  that  the  currency  shall  be  based  on 
quick  assets.  His  land,  or  even  a  mortgage  on  it, 
cannot  be  sold  for  full  value  at  a  moment's  notice,  if 
there  should  be  a  run  on  the  bank  to  redeem  its  notes 
in  gold. 

This  brings  up  the  serious  question  of  how  to  sup- 
ply the  demand  for  money  in  thinly-settled  regions 
where  there  are  no  banks — where,  according  to  stories 
we  hear,  a  man  sometimes  rides  around  a  whole  day 
in  a  vain  effort  to  get  a  fifty-dollar  bill  changed ;  and  a 
man  on  being  asked  if  he  could  change  a 
llVl'ookout'^'"^  ten-dollar  bill,  answered:  "I  never  had  so 
much  money  in  my  life,  but  thank  you  for 
the  compliment,  all  the  same."  In  the  first  place, 
the  reason  for  lack  of  money  in  such  regions,  is 
generally  (not  always)  the  same  as  for  the  lack  of  it 
anywhere  else — the  people  have  not  the  wealth  to  base 
it  on,  or  the  ability  to  make  the  wealth — in  fifty-dollar 
bills  which  they  cannot  change,  or  in  any  other  shape: 
the    regions    are    generally    poverty-stricken,   and    the 


390  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  383  a 

attempt  to  give  them  plenty  of  money  by  putting  a 
bankful  of  it  among  them,  would  do  no  more  good 
than  to  put  a  bankful  among  the  New  York  tene- 
ments: the  people  cannot  get  the  money  unless  they 
have  something  to  exchange  or  pledge  for  it.  Even  if 
the  farmers  wanted  to  mortgage  their  farms  to  a  new 
bank,  often  they  could  not  do  it,  because  the  farms  are 
often  mortgaged  already. 

Still,  there  are  places  where  people  really  have 
good  farms  and  crops,  but  not  enough  money  for  ordi- 
nary needs.  But  it  would  be  odd  if  such  regions  had 
the  resources  to  establish  banks,  and  the  need  for 
them,  and  still  went  without  them.  So  their  demand 
for  banks  still  looks  like  one  more  form  of  the  cry  that 
assumes  so  many  forms — for  government  to  supply 
money  to  those  who  cannot  supply  themselves. 
383  (b)  Remedu  ^^^  there  are  places  to  which  it  would 
for  legitimate  be  wcU  for  bauks  clscwliere  to  send 
branches.  That  is  actually  done  in  some 
countries — in  Scotland  and  Canada,  for  instance:  a 
city  bank  will  get  a  country  storekeeper  to  start  a 
little  branch,  supplying  him  with  money  and  elaborate 
instructions  based  on  experience;  and  such  a  branch  is 
often   a  very  good  thing  for  everybody  concerned. 

Apparently  the  serious  want  is  in  places  too  small 
for  even  our  new  banks  with  $25,000  capital.  Little 
agencies  seem  to  be  still  wanted.  A  few  of  them  wisely 
distributed  undoubtedly  would  silence  all  reasonable 
calls  for  "more  money". 

Two  things  can  be  done  to  facilitate  that — enable 
banks,  by  law,  to  establish  branches;  and  take  off 
the  taxation — from  small  ones  at  least.  The  general 
government  does  not  get  enough  from  bank  taxation 
to  make  it  worth  bothering  with  anyhow.  It  is  one 
of  the  pottering  taxes  that  ought  to  be  cleared  out  of 
the  way.  It  yields  only  a  half  of  one  per  cent,  of  the 
national  income. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

PUBLIC    WORKS. 

Extra-Mtmicipal. 

So  much  for  Money.  Probably  the  next  item  of 
popular  convenience  evolved  by  government,  and  one 
over  which  government  care  is  almost  equally  taken 
for  granted,  is  roads  of  some  sort;  but  as  already  inti- 
384  R   d  mated,  the  kind  and  degree  of  care  that 

government  should  take  of  the  new  forms 
of  roads — railroads  and  city  railways,  is  open  to  much 
debate. 

Regarding  the  immense  importance  of  roads,  there 
is  a  very  early  and  very  authoritative  piece  of  testi- 
38A  (a).  As  spread- mony.  The  Romans  were  the  greatest 
ing  ciuiiization.  road-buildcrs  and — a  very  suggestive  fact 
in  the  connection— the  greatest  spreaders  of  civilization 
the  world  ever  saw  before  our  own  race  took  hold. 
The  proconsul  who  was  probably  the  most  famous 
advancer  of  Roman  civilization  in  barbarous  regions, 
when  asked  what  was  the  first  thing  he  provided  a 
new  country  with,  answered:  "Roads";  "And  the 
next  thing?"  "More  roads";  "And  then?"  "Still 
more    roads." 

As  the  importance  of  roads  bears  on  many  civic 
questions,  we  will  consider  them  more  fully  than  some 
other  topics  which  at  first  seem  nearer  the  centre 
of  civic  relations.  The  Romans,  in  carrying  out  this 
principle,  put  roads  through  most  of  continental 
Europe  west  of  Russia  and  south  of  Scandinavia,  and 

391 


392  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§3840 

even  into  Great  Britain — man}^  of  which  are  highways 
of  civihzation  to  this  day.  These  were  far  from  being 
private  enterprises:  they  were  primarily  the  work  of 
miUtary  engineers  to  facihtate  the  movements  of 
armies — good  out  of  an  ill  wind. 

As  between  private  work  and  govern- 
^nVJl^'mcT'"*'""  iT^ent  work,  the  general  evolution  of  road- 
making  by  our  race,  has  been  somewhat 
as  follows:  at  first  in  England,  and  after  the  settle- 
ment here,  and  in  some  rural  regions  to  this  day, 
everybody  has  had  to  give  some  days  every  year  to 
road-making,  or  furnish  a  substitute.  This  was  by 
degrees  commuted  into  money,  just  as  military  service 
was  (56a),  and  road-makers  were  hired  by  the  govern- 
ment, as  soldiers  were. 

Passage  was  generally  free  over  roads  thus  made ;  tho 
as  cities  grew  up,  both  in  the  old  home  and  here,  govern- 
ment not  only  itself  improved  roads  between  them,  but 
also  chartered  private  corporations  to  do  it;  and  on 
these  roads,  tolls  were  generally  charged.  As  the 
Romans  were  the  best  road-makers  among  the  great 
nations,  it  may  be  interesting  to  note  that  the  worst 
are  unquestionably  "our  noble  selves".  The  reason 
was  our  expansion  over  great  tracts  of  new  country 
before  good  roads  had  time  to  grow  up,  and  hence  the 
habit  of  putting  up  with  poor  ones.  Later,  when  we 
wanted  better  things,  improvement  has  been  much 
blocked  by  bad  organization  and  corrupt  local  govern- 
ment. 

384  cc;.  BadAmeri-  Government  road-making  may  be  con- 
can  organization,  sidcred  established.  But  American  or- 
ganization has  been  left  too  much  to  local  control. 
Outside  of  unmistakable  city  and  village  streets  (and 
possibly  inside  of  them),  it  should  be  a  state  function; 
and  it  is  far  from  certain  that  it  should  not  be  a  na- 
•  tional  function.  Every  important  road  must  extend 
through  poor  and  thinly  populated  towns  and  counties, 
as  well  as  rich  ones.  The  poor  ones  are  not  able  to 
keep  their  roads  up  to  a  good  standard,  nor  is  it  fair 
that  they  should:  for  they  really  do  not  use  them  as 


§  385]  Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  393 

much  as  do  the  people  of  more  populous  adjoining 
towns.  Moreover,  the  poor  road-making  thus  forced 
on  the  poor  towns  is  not  confined  to  them  alone,  but 
tends  to   become  the  standard  for  their  neighbors. 

.These  difficulties  are  more  effectual  with  us  than 
with  other  civilized  nations,  because  our  ancestral  spirit 
cf  local  independence — our  desires  to  govern  our  home 
affairs  ourselves,  our  objection  to  submitting  them  to 
the  more  remote  state  and  national  governments,  is  so 
strong  that  many  consider  it  the  very  basis  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  liberty.  Even  in  such  a  town  as  Concord,  Massa- 
chusetts, quite  possibly  the  most  enlightened  rural  town 
in  the  world  (and  consequently  one  of  the  most  wealthy"* 
part  of  a  magnificent  boulevard  intended  to  run  from 
one  end  of  the  state  to  the  other  was  bitterly  opposed 
because:  "This  town  has  always  been  able  to  manage 
its  own  roads. " 

Yet  while  Anglo-Saxon  local  independence  obstructs 
roads  so  much,  England  has  splendid  ones,  because  our 
English  cousins  are  more  thickly  crowded ;  their  roads 
are  older  than  ours ;  and  they  are  near  such  good  ex- 
amples in  France  and  Switzerland.  Relative  wealth 
cannot  affect  the  matter  much  as  regards  our  older 
and  richer  states:  for  they  are  rich  enough;  but  our 
national  wastefulness  and  extravagance  have  a  good 
deal  to  do  with  it.  Few  things  are  more  wasteful  and 
extravagant  than  poor  roads:  in  any  ordinary  civilized 
region,  they  waste  more,  over  and  over  again,  in  horse- 
flesh, wagon-wear,  and  time  of  man  and  beast,  than 
good  roads  would  cost. 

Tolls  are  not  generally  charged  now,  tho  there  are 
some  survivals.  But  in  most  cases  governments  have 
abandoned  the  tolls  on  their  own  roads,  supporting  them 
b}''  taxation,  and  have  also  acquired  the  private  toll- 
roads  by  eminent  domain,  and  thrown  the  toll-gates 
open. 

The  experience  in  this  regard  with  bridges  has  been 

about  the  same  as  with  roads;    yet  the 

^  ^  ^'         greatest  and  newest  of  the  great  bridges — 


394  The  Promotion  of  Corivenience  [§  385  <2 

those  between  New  York  and  Brooklyn,  tho  built  by 
the  city  governments,  still  take  toll.  But  there  is 
prospect  of  its  speedy  abolishment.  Yet  at  first  sight, 
it  does  not  seem  fair  that  the  vast  majority  of  the  resi- 
dents of  the  Greater  New  York,  who  do  not  use  the 
bridges  half  a  dozen  times  a  year,  and  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  them  who  do  not  use  them  at  all,  should 
pay  as  much  as  those  who  use  them  twice  or  oftener 
every  day.  But  the 'argument  carried  out  with  stern 
logic,  would  put  a  toll-gatherer  at  every  bridge  in  the 
country,  and  very  few  people  want  that  done.  As  long 
as  each  man  has  a  right  to  the  free  use  of  such  a  general 
and  important  pubhc  convenience  when  he  wants  it,  as 
long  as  the  cost  for  each  person  is  a  trifle,  and  the 
indirect  benefit  to  every  person,  whether  he  uses  it 
or  not,  is  great,  the  question  whether  one  man  wants 
it  more  than  another,  is  one  of  those  trifles  which  the 
law  does  not  bother  itself  with.* 

386.  Regulation  Roads  and  bridges  in  a  sense  operate 

^,wners  ip.     pera-  -t^i^gj-Qsgiygg^   \yy^i  now  it   is   time   to   take 

special  note  that  as  we  come  to  facilities  requiring 
operation,  there  are  three  relations  which  government 
can  occupy  toward  public  facilities — regulation,  owner- 
ship and  operation,  and  neither  of  the  first  two  involves 
a  later  one.  It  is  especially  important  to  keep  in  mind 
the  last  two  as  distinct:  much  mischief  is  done  by 
confusing  them.  There  is  a  wide  and  intelligent  senti- 
ment in  favor  of  government  ownership  of  franchises, 
especially  in  cities,  in  order  that  their  unearned  incre- 
ment, often  very  large,  may  go  to  the  people  instead 
of  private  monopolists.  And  there  is  even  a  more 
intelligent,  and  consequently,  of  course,  less  wide 
sentiment  that  under  the  universal  suffrage  pervading 
American  and  French  cities  alone,  the  operation  of 
the  franchises  is  a  task  too  heavy  for  the  political 
capacity.     During    the    Hearst    campaign    which    dis- 

*  De  minimis  non  curat  lex. 


§387^]  Extra-Municipal  Piihlic  Works.  395 

graced  New  York  City  in  1905,  the  cry  of  his  sup- 
porters was  "municipal  ownership",  while  what  they 
really  meant  was  municipal  operation;  and  the  confu- 
sion of  terms  drew  to  their  ranks  and  even  their  ticket, 
many  of  the  foggy-minded  sentimentalists  who  are 
too  ready  to  sympathize  with  any  cause  containing 
a  grain  of  wheat,  tho  its  main  constituents  be 
chaff. 

387.  Ferries  and  ^^   shall   reach  more   definite   applica- 

docks.  tions    of   the    principles   just   enumerated 

as  we  go  on.  Let  us  begin  by  noticing  that  ferries 
require  infinitely  more  management  than  roads  and 
bridges.  Yet  government  has  operated  them  several 
times  in  Great  Britain,  and  occasionally  in  Germany, 
but  very  seldom  in  America.  In  1904  London  took 
over  the  Thames  steamboats.  By  1906  they  showed 
a  heavy  loss.  Of  the  government  ferries,  some  are 
free  and  some  are  not.  Boston  charges  for  one,  but 
runs  it  at  a  loss.  Glasgow  makes  a  big  profit  on  hers. 
The  one  over  the  Thames  at  Woolwich  is  supposed  to 
perform  the  service  that  bridges  do  higher  up  the 
stream,  and  like  them  is  free.  In  1905  New  York  took 
over  the  Staten  Island  ferry,  but  so  far  with  very  un- 
387ra;.  Municipal  Satisfactory  results.  If  reports  the  world 
and  Private  ovcr  cau  be  rclicd  upon,  there  is  nothing 

exceptional  in  the  showing  of  government 
extravagance  given  by  the  following  figures  from  the 
New  York  City  statistician  in  1906,  and  showing  the 
monthly  salary  items  of  the  ferries  run  by  the  munici- 
pality, in  comparison  with  those  for  the  ferry  under 
private  management  at  Thirty-ninth  Street,  Brooklyn, 
and  the  one  run  in  New  York  Harbor  by  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad  Company.  It  is  claimed  that  the  munici- 
pal ferryboats  are  so  much  larger  as  to  require  some 
officers  that  the  Railroad  Company's  boats  do  not.  The 
city  employs  three  crews  a  da}^;  the  Railroad  Company, 
two.  I  am  not,  however,  advocating  that  method  of 
economy:  for  the  indications  are  strong  that  it  does 
not  result  economically. 


396  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  \^  387  a 

^;.„  30th  St.  Penna. 

^"y-  Ferry.  R.  R. 

Captain $137  •  5°  $i35-  00  $130 .00 

Quartermaster 100.00  None  55- 00 

Deckhand 60 .  00  55  •  00  49-5° 

Porter 5  5  •  00  40  .  00  49  •  50 

Engineer 125. 00  120.  00  120.  00 

Assistant  engineer 125.00  None  82.50 

Oiler go .  00  None  77  .  00 

Water-tender 100.00  None  66.00 

Fireman -.  .  .  .  go. 00  65.00  66.00 

Attendant 50 .  00  None  None 

Mate 7  5  •  00  None  None 

Ashman 76.00  52-50  49-5° 

The  franchises  (159  c)  of  American  ferries  have  not 
generally  been  given  away.  Even  in  New  York,  where 
the  exceptionally  valuable  street-railway  franchises 
were  once  given  away  freely,  the  ferry  franchises  have 
usually  been  sold  for  terms  of  years  to  the  highest 
bidders.  Docks  in  Liverpool,  Glasgow,  Hamburg  and 
many  other  European  cities,  have  been  splendidly  and 
profitably  provided  and  cared  for  by  the  local  govern- 
ments. In  the  United  States  they  are  generally  inferior, 
tho  they  are  rapidly  improving.  We  shall  see  some  gen- 
eral reasons  for  this  inferiority  later;  but  at  best,  docks 
are  used  by  so  small  a  portion  of  the  people  that  they 
are  not  under  as  general  criticism  as  most  municipal 
conveniences  (389  /,  392  c),  and  their  management  is 
therefore  peculiarly  liable  to  be  stupid  and  corrupt.* 

Now  to  come  to  the  modern  modifica- 
tion of  roads — the  railroads. f     Regarding 
them,  it  is  not  -fair  to  compare  the  United  States  as  a 
whole  with  any  other  great  nation  exclu- 
2^^  (a).  Superior    givc  of  its  colouies,  bccausc  most  of  the 
^and' England.         United  States  is  very  thinly  settled.     If  we 
consider  only  the  parts  of  our  own  country 

*  Treating  ferries  and  docks  as  extra-municipal  may  need 
defence,  but  so  would  treating  them  as  municipal. 

t  In  treating  this  subject,  I  have  been  under  great  obligations 
to  Professor  Daniels'  "Elements  of  Public  Finance",  and  to 
Professor  Seager's  Economics,  tho  not  as  great  as,  perhaps, 
the  concurrence  of  our  views  would  indicate. 


§  388  b]         Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  397 

as  thickly  settled  as  other  civilized  countries,  the  five 
greatest  nations  in  the  order  of  the  frequency,  speed 
and  comfort  of  their  railroad  trains,  unquestionably 
would  be:  the  United  States,  England,  France,  Ger- 
many, Italy.  The  order  with  reference  to  degree  of 
private  ownership  would  be  very  nearly  the  same: 
in  England  and  the  United  States,  the  ownership  ^and 
management  are  virtually  entirely  private.  In  France 
the  government  owns  part  of  the  roads,  and  leases  them 
to  private  companies,  who  run  them;  in  Germany, 
where  the  government  attends  in  a  paternal  way  to 
more  things  than  government  does  in  any  other  great 
nation,  it  both  owns  and  runs  nearly  all  the  railroads; 
and  so  also  in  Italy  until  the  government  leased  its 
roads  to  private  companies — partly  because  it  recog- 
nized the  roads  as  sources  of  political  corruption. 

^^^1  But  the  Italian  leases,  after  twenty  years, 

fell  in  in  1905.  A  bill  came  before  Parlia- 
ment to  have  government  resume  the  running  of  the 
roads.  It  was  backed  by  the  employees,  who  believed, 
from  the  traditions  of  the  previous  government  control, 
that  they  would  have  an  easier  time  under  it  than  under 
private  companies.  This  behef  was  probably  correct, 
but  it  virtually  asserts  the  greater  efficiency  of  private 
management.  In  support  of  the  bill,  there  was  of  course 
fermented  a  popular  idea  that  the  private  managers  were 
making  too  much  money,  and  giving  too  little  for  what 
they  got.  Such  an  idea  of  any  existing  institution,  of 
course  always  pervades  the  party  of  discontent. 

The  matter  was  settled  by  government  undertaking  the 
operation.  If  it  were  not  for  the  apparent  impossibility, 
alluded  to  more  than  once  in  this  volume,  of  getting 
unbiased  testimony  on  such  a  subject,  the  result  of 
this  action  on  the  part  of  the  government  would  be 
plain  in  the  following  letter  to  the  London  Times: 


"  Rome,  Oct.  23  [igo6]. — The  government  ownership  of  rail- 
ways in  Italy  continues  a  menace  to  the  life  and  limbs  of  those 
compelled  to  travel  in  this  country.  Another  serious  accident 
occurred  yesterday,   a  passenger  train   running  into   a  goods 


398  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  38S& 

train  near  Turin.  Sixteen  passengers  were  hurt.  The  engine 
driver,  station  agent,  and  pointsman  are  in  hiding. 

"  It  would  seem  that  the  discipUne  of  raihvay  servants  leaves 
something  to  be  desired,  and  this  no  doubt  is  a  factor  in  the 
general  disorganization,  of  which  complaint  is  made  in  all 
parts  of  the  country. 

"Apart  from  all  question  of  danger  in  railway  traveling,  Italy 
is  made  so  wretchedly  uncomfortable  that  visitors  may  well 
pause  to  consider  whether  the  pleasure  of  being  in  Italy  is  worth 
the  misery  of  being  in  Italian  trains." 

388  re;  Germany.  ^^^  ^^^®  German  experience  is  really  the 
only  one  great  enough  to  justify  compari- 
son with  ours.  If  we  compare  only  the  portion  of 
the  United  States  whose  population  is  something  like 
as  dense  as  Germany's,  in  that  portion  we  surpass 
Germany,  partly  because  of  the  great  inventiveness 
of  the  American  people,  partly  because  of  their  greater 
tendency  to  move  about,  and  their  having  more  money 
to  do  it  with,  but  mainly  because  of  the  fact  that 
American  railway  officials  are  in  the  business  to  make 
all  they  can  out  of  it,  and  are  stimulated  by  fierce 
competition  between  themselves  and  between  their 
roads.  Yet  the  American  roads  are  falling  ofif  in 
efficiency  because  of  trade-unionism  among  the  men, 
and  the  interference  of  banking  interests  in  the  manage- 
ment. Still,  the  Germans  are  behind  us  because  their 
railway  officials  are  government  emplo3^ees  at  salaries 
not  apt  to  be  changed,  and  with  all  the  routine  indiffer- 
ence that  everywhere  characterizes  the  government 
employee  with  nothing  to  lose  and  nothing  to  gain. 
The  fares,  tho  about  the  same  in  money  as  ours,  are 
twice  as  high,  compared  with  other  things,  as  they  are 
in  the  thickly  settled  portions  of  America,  and  the 
trains  do  not  run  half  as  often. 

At  the  Railway  Congress  in  Washington  in  1905  the 
German  Ambassador  said:  "We  do  not  recommend 
that  you  follow  our  example  in  the  national  ownership  of 
railways."  He  probably  meant  the  national  operation: 
the  ownership  is  a  much  more  hopeful  proposition. 
The  government  operation  in  Germany  has  failed  in 
the  particulars   (among  others)  which  our  people,  the 


§  388cf]         Extra-Mtintcipal  Public  Works.  399 

President  at  the  head,  are  clamoring  for  government  to 
remedy  here — in  securing  dissimilar  rates  under  dissimi- 
lar circumstances — between  long  and  short  hauls,  be- 
tween competing  and  non-competing  points,  between 
land  and  water  competition,  and  between  small  custom- 
ers and  large  customers. 

An  important  point  of  comparison  is  the  proportion  of 
trunk  lines  opening  up  a  variety  of  villages  between 
central  points,  on  the  continent  of  Europe,  as  compared 
with  England  and  America.  In  the  countries  of  govern- 
ment roads,  there  is  usually  but  one  trunk-line  between 
important  points.  In  England  and  America,  there  are 
usually  several,  each  opening  up  its  own  line  of  towns 
and  villages,  and  all  forcing  each  other,  through  com- 
petition, to  the  utmost  econom}^  and  efficiency. 

Regarding  comparison  in  charges  for  service  between 
government  roads  and  private  roads  in  the  same  state, 
statistics  are  scarce  and  somewhat  unreliable,  because 
of  the  confusion  between  passengers  of  different  classes, 
and  because  it  is  next  to  impossible  to  tell  what  a  gov- 
ernment road  really  costs  the  people :  fares  may  be  eked 
out  by  taxation. 

American  experience  in  government  management 
amounts  to  very  little. 

388  (d)  Govern-  '^^^^  ^^^Y  °^  Cincinnati  owns  the  Cincinnati 
went  operation       Southcm    Railway,    but    leases    it    to    a 

//;  America.  ■        , 

private  company. 
The  state  of  Missouri  has  had  a  little  experience  with 
railroads.  Governor  Folk  is  reported  to  have  delivered 
himself  substantially  as  follows  on  the  day  in  1906  after 
Mr.  Bryan,  at  his  home-coming  reception  in  Madison 
Square  Garden,  had  announced  himself  in  favor  of  gov- 
ernment operation  of  the  railroads : 

"Mr.  Brv'an's  proposition  for  the  taking  over  of  railway  lines 
by  the  national  and  state  governments  would  be  met  with  no 
acceptance  in  his  [Gov.  Folk's]  state,  where  the  experiment 
had  been  tried  and  found  wanting. 

' '  Missouri  had  pledged  her  credit  in  subsidizing  the  lines.  Prac- 
tical paralysis  of  traffic  during  the  civil  war  forced  defaults  of 
interest  payments  on  the  bonds.  Under  the  terms  of  the  char- 
ters, whenever  such  default  was  made  the  state  was  empowered 


400  The  Promotion  oj  Convenience.  [§3880? 

to  sell  the  lines  to  the  highest  bidder,  or  to  become  itself  the 
proprietor  under  the  liens  it  held  as  guarantor.  In  this  way- 
all  of  the  lines  became  the  property  of  the  state,  with  the 
exception  of  the  Hannibal  &  St.  Joseph,  now  a  part  of  the 
Wabash  system. 

"  The  state's  mode  of  operation  was  for  the  governor  to 
appoint  a  general  superintendent  or  manager.  Such  appoint- 
ments were  of  course  political.  One  of  the  first  was  that 
of  J.  T.  K.  Hayward  of  Hannibal  as  general  superintendent  of 
what  was  then  called  the  Platte  County  Railroad.  This  was 
very  near  the  close  of  the  war,  when  the  ravages  of  armies  had 
ceased,  commerce  was  reviving,  and  confidence  returning.  Traf- 
fic along  these  lines  was  increasing  rapidly. 

"Yet  every  month  showed  a  deficit  in  the  finances  of  every 
line  except  the  Hannibal  &  St.  Joseph.  Loaded  down  with 
political  appointees  lacking  both  railroad  experience  and  natural 
efficiency,  the  [government]  road  was  such  a  continuing  burden 
to  the  state  that,  by  a  legislative  act  of  March  17,  1868,  a 
private  corporation  which  was  willing  to  take  it  off  the  hands 
of  the  state  and  extend  it  far  enough  to  reach  the  Iowa  and 
Kansas  lines  was  relieved  of  all  financial  liability  under  the 
original  charter,  the  state  assuming  the  entire  bonded  debt  with 
the  interest  then  accumulated. 

"State  Senator  Woemer,  a  Democratic  member  of  the 
joint  committee  appointed  to  investigate  charges  of  collusion 
in  the  sales,  said,  in  a  special  report,  that  the  state  would  be 
making  a  good  bargain  to  donate  the  lines  to  any  responsible 
parties  who  could  extend  them  and  operate  them  without 
cost  to  the  taxpayers. 

"While  the  lines  were  the  property  of  the  state  they  were 
not,  of  course,  assessed  for  taxation.  Immediately  after  the 
sales  assessments  began,  and  extensions,  improvements  and 
betterinents  of  all  sorts  have  increased  these  assessments  steadily. 
This  year  the  ten  trunk  lines  traversing  Missouri,  eight  of 
which  are  outgrowths  of  the  lines  sold  by  the  State  in  the  sixties, 
are  assessed  for  $34,000,000. 

"It  is  impossible  to  see  how  Missouri  could  ever  have  stag- 
gered from  under  the  debt  of  $31,735,840,  without  this  source 
of  taxation." 

388  (el  American  Despite  the  frequency,  speed  and  com- 
constniction  less  fort  of  the  trains  on  American  railroads 
thorougi,  where  population   is   dense,   they   do   not 

surpass  the  European  roads  as  roads:  they  are  not, 
on  the  whole,  as  carefully  built,  or  as  safe  to  the  passen- 
gers or  to  the  people  among  whom  they  'pass.  That, 
too,  is  probably  influenced  by  the  relations  between 
the  roads  and  government.     Governments  are  more  in 


§  388  g]  Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  401 

the  way  of  looking  out  for  the  rights  of  the  people  in 
general  than  private  corporations  are,  and  are  less  apt 
to  consult  economy;  moreover,  if  a  man  gets  killed  in 
Europe,  a  government  loses  a  possible  soldier,  and  it 
cannot  spare  soldiers:  for  all  these  reasons,  a  European 
government  would  be  more  apt  than  the  American  to 
put  a  bridge  where  a  railroad  crosses  a  driving-road, 
and  to  go  through  a  town  above  the  streets  or  under 
them.  This  has  actually  been  vastly  more  the  practice 
abroad  than  here.  Our  murderous  grade-crossings  are 
388(f)  andinci-  ^ilmost  unknown  in  Europe,  and  where 
dentally  less  they  occur,  there  is  more  precaution  and 
^'  delay  by  closing  gates  than  our  people 
would  stand.  In  England  the  construction  of  the 
roads,  especially  in  the  way  of  elevated  tracks  going 
through  cities,  and  possibly  at  grade-crossings,  is  per- 
haps not  as  thorough  as  in  Germany ;  in  other  respects 
the  care  for  the  public  safety  compares  favorably. 
Government  ownership,  however,  is  not  necessary  to 
secure  that.  Good  government  can  secure  it,  whether 
it  owns  the  roads  or  not;  it  does  secure  it  in  England; 
and  government  is,  on  the  whole,  improving  in  doing 
it  here. 

388  (g).  Freight  The  great  difficulty  regarding  rates  of 

discriminations,  f^^-g  ^^^^  freight  in  America  is  the  same, 
probably,  as  with  privately  operated  roads  everywhere : 
through  rates  between  great  cities  served  by  several 
lines  of  roads,  or  b}^  a  water  line  as  well  as  a  railroad 
line,  have  naturally  been  lowered  by  competition,  some- 
times below  the  paying  point.  The  roads  have  to 
make  up  for  it  by  higher  rates  for  the  intermediate  non- 
competitive points.  Of  course  they  are  as  apt — even 
more  apt,  to  get  these  local  rates  above  reason,  than  to 
get  the  through  rates  below  reason.  Hence  discontent 
that  sometimes  overlooks  the  difficulties  of  the  roads, 
and  hence  grangerism  and  the  call  for  government  con- 
trol (154  a)  or  even  government  operation. 

The  roads  have  been  led  into  the  golden-goose-killing 
operations  of  destroying  the  profitable  part  of  their 
business  by  driving  population  from  non-competitive 


402  The  Pro7notioii  of  Convenience.  [§388g 

points  to  competing  ones.  Mr.  Stickney  *  says  that 
between  1870  and  1890,  in  Illinois,  Wisconsin,  Iowa 
and  Minnesota,  the  former  class  decreased  in  population, 
and  the  latter  increased. 

Besides  discrimination  between  points,  there  has  been 
a  more  arbitrary  discrimination  between  goods,  and 
through  this  means,  as  well  as  directly,  between  per- 
sons. 

And  yet  despite  all  complaints,  just  and  unjust,  the 
U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor  reports  a  large,  decrease  in  the 
cost  of  transportation  while  the  complaints  have  been 
loudest. 

388  (h)  consoii-  ^^  course  all  the  complaints  are  used  as 
dation  and  arguments  by  the  advocates  of  government 

compe  I  ion.  roads.     As  to  government  operation  affect- 

ing competition,  the  argument  is  the  same  as  the  argu- 
ment for  trusts  (152):  the  enormous  waste  of  competi- 
tive advertising  between  competing  roads,  and  the  fre- 
quent duplication  of  management — several  able  men 
doing  work  which,  if  the  roads  were  under  one  man- 
agement, could  be  done  by  one  able  man,  with  clerks 
in  the  place  of  the  others — the  other  able  men  being 
released  to  increase  and  cheapen  other  production  or 
develop  new  conveniences  (331)-  But  all  this  is  not 
necessarily  an  argument  for  government  ownership, 
but  only  for  consolidation;  and  then  come  in  all  the 
monopoly  arguments  against  that.  But  those  argu- 
ments hardly  have  the  best  of  it,  as  anyone  knows  who 
has  taken  frequent  journeys  over  routes  parceled  out 
among  several  little  roads,  with  their  conflicting  con- 
nections, delays  at  junctions,  and  retail  rates;  and  over 
the  same  routes  after  the  little  roads  have  been  con- 
solidated, their  connections  and  ticket-books  unified, 
and  their  rates  brought  to  the  wholesale  standard  of 
big  enterprises.  But  to  return  to  the  general  rate 

question.     General  extortion   is   charged,    but,    on   the 

*  "The   Railroad    Problem",   p.    62,    quoted   in    Daniels   on 
Finance. 


§388^]  Extra-Municipal  Ptihlic  Works.  403 

whole,  unreasonably:  our  freight-rates,  despite  our 
vast  uninhabited  stretches,  are  far  the  lowest  in  the 
world;  and  in  our  thickly  settled  regions,  our  passen- 
ger-rates compare  very  favorably  with  all  others; 
and  moreover  both  rates  are  steadily  declining.  How 
much  of  this  is  due  to  government  regulation,  and 
how  much  to  the  inevitable  action  of  competition,  is 
very  hard  to  determine.  With  us  government  regu- 
lation i"S  in  its  infancy,  and  has  made  mistakes.  It 
has  not  yet  always  succeeded  in  getting  its  rates  ad- 
hered to,  and,  as  it  has  greatly  insisted  on  rates  in 
proportion  to  distance,  regardless  of  competition  at 
certain  points,  it  has  prevented  the  roads  holding  each 
other  to  agreements  regarding  competitive  places  which 
might  enable  them  to  be  easier  on  non-competitive 
places. 

388  (i).  constitu-  The  state's  right  to  regulate  the  roads 
tionai  questions,  ariscs  from  the  fact  that  the  roads  are  the 
creatures  of  the  state.  Whether  the  state  owns  them 
or  not,  they  are  natural  monopolies,  and  with  us  exist 
only  by  the  use  of  the  state's  right  of  eminent  domain: 
so  the  state  has  the  right  to  prescribe  the  conditions 
of  their  existence  (154  b). 

But  suppose  a  road  is  built  without  any  under- 
standing regarding  rates,  or,  for  that  matter,  with  an 
understanding,  it  is  a  question  whether  the  state  has 
then  a  right  to  impose  new  rates.  It  has  been  claimed 
that  the  conditions  under  which  a  company  builds  a 
road,  constitute  a  contract  with  the  state;  and  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  (Art.  II,  Sec.  X) 
provides  that  no  state  shall  pass  a  law  impairing  the 
obligation  of  contracts.  But  under  the  Constitution 
(Art.  I,  Sec.  VIII)  the  United  States  has  the  right 
to  "regulate  commerce  between  the  several  states", 
and  can  probably  pass  laws  under  that  provision  which 
would  help  remedy  the  difficulty.  As  to  the  individual 
state,  it  is  a  question  whether  the  constitutional  pro= 
vision  affects  a  state's  relation  with  its  citizens,  or  the 
relations  of  citizens  with  each  other:  for  instance,  each 
man  holds  his  land  from  the  state,  and  yet  the  state 


404  The  Promotion  oj  Convenience.  [§388^" 

can  take  it  from  him  by  eminent  domain.  But  emi- 
nent domain  was  an  established  institution  before  any 
American  state  was;  it  is  part  of  the  original  under- 
standing— the  unwritten  constitution,  and  therefore 
tacitly  exempted  from  interference  by  later  laws;  and 
it  looks  as  if  a  corporation  in  receiving  a  charter,  had' 
to  admit  certain  rights  as  held  in  reserve  by  the  state 
for  the  public  good.  Moreover,  for  a  long  time  past, 
most  charters  have 'been  granted  subject  to  amend- 
ment or  repeal. 

If  the  charter  creates  a  virtual  monopoly,  of  course 
the  case  for  the  state's  right -of  amendment  is  all  the 
stronger.  But  a  city  is  not  a  state,  and  if  a  city  makes 
a  contract  with  a  street-railway  company  for  a  rate 
of  fare,  that  is  clearly  a  contract,  not  of  the  state  with 
its  citizens,  but  of  citizens  with  citizens:  the  state 
cannot  interfere  there;  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  clearly  forbids. 

388  (j).  Taxation  Yet  if  the  railroad  is  taking  too  much 
of  franchises.  mouey  from  the  people,  the  state  could 
amend  most  any  recent  charter,  or  both  the  state  and  the 
city  could  tax  the  franchise,  unless  something  in  the  state 
constitution  might  forbid.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  agita- 
tion now  for  state  legislation  making  the  right  to  tax 
all  franchises  perfectly  clear.  New  York  passed  a  law 
to  do  it  in  1899.  Nevertheless,  taxing  a  franchise,  either 
by  the  city  or  by  the  state,  does  not  cover  the  whole 
case,  especially  (as  we  shall  see  more  particularly  later), 
as  taxation  for  any  purpose  but  the  raising  of  revenue, 
is  very  doubtful  policy.  Moreover,  it  is  conceivable 
that  if  fare  and  freight  were  made  expensive,  and  then 
the  money  taxed  away  from  the  roads,  enough  might  be 
got  to  run  the  whole  government,  and  yet  it  would  be 
solely  at  the  expense  of  those  using  the  roads,  and  all 
others  would  escape  taxation.  Perhaps,  tho,  those  who 
do  not  use  them,  directly  or  indirectly,  are  so  few  and 
pav  so  little  in  taxes  that,  as  in  the  case  of  bridges,  the 
question  concerning  them  may  be  regarded  as  one  of  the 
trifles  that  the  law  does  not  take  into  account. 


§  388  /]  Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  405 

388  rft;  Corpora-  ^^^^  ^^^^  adjustment,  then,  would  seem 
tion  graft  and  to  be  to  keep  charges  at  the  point  where 
poiitna  graf  .  ^^^^  roads  Can  make  a  fair  return  on  capital 
and  pay  about  the  same  rate  of  taxes  that  other  property 
does.  That  assumes,  however,  that  the  railroads  can 
all  make  money  enough  to  do  all  those  cheerful  things; 
but  in  the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  most 
of  the  American  railroads  were  bankrupt.  They  had 
been  built  faster  than  business  had  grown  to  support 
them,  and  very  often  the  men  spending  the  stock- 
holders' money  incorporated  themselves  as  "construc- 
tion companies"  and  "car  companies",  and  then  paid 
those  companies  enormous  prices  to  build  the  roads 
and  equipments. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  the  roads  would 
have  been  more  prosperous  if  they  had  been  govern- 
ment institutions.  Probably,  however,  their  officers 
would  not  have  been  less  so,  for  as  governments  run 
things  in  America,  the  politicians  in  charge  of  such 
public  works  as  we  have,  are  not  generally  supposed 
to  suffer  from  lack  of  prosperity. 

388  (I).  American  There  havc  been  several  efforts  to  regu- 
attempts  at  gov-     late   the   priccs    charged   by   the   railroad 

ernment regulation,  i-  rT\^  i   •    r        r     j.i 

monopolies,  ihe  chiet  01  these  m  our 
country  are  the  Rate  Bill  of  1906,  not  yet  tested  at 
this  writing,  and  the  Interstate  Commerce  Act  of  1887, 
which  is  thus  summarized  by  Professor  Seager:* 

"  (i)  Discriminations  between  persons,  places  and  commodi- 
ties were  prohibited,  and  railroad  officials  granting  discriminating 
rates  were  inade  liable  to  fine  and  imprisonment;  (2)  railway 
rates  for  interstate  traf^c  were  required  to  be  just  and  reason- 
able, and  any  rate  not  just  and  reasonable  was  declared  to  be 
unlawful,  and  valid  ground  for  a  suit  for  damages  by  the 
injured  party ;  (3)  railroads  were  required  to  publish  their  rates 
and  to  change  them  only  on  public  notice;  (4)  they  were  pro- 
hibited from  charging  a  higher  rate  for  a  short  haul  than  for 
a  long  haul  over  the  same  line  and  under  similar  circumstances, 
unless  authorized  to  do  so  by  the  Interstate  Cominerce  Com- 
mission; (5)  pooling  contracts  between  railroads  were  prohib- 
ited.    The  act  also  created  an   Interstate  Commerce  Commis- 

*  Op.  cit. 


4o6  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  3SS  ^ 

sion  to  consist  of  five  members  and  to  be  responsible  for  its 
enforcement  and  the  investigation  of  cases  of  alleged  violation.' 

The  act  has  been  found  defective  in 

"the  attempt  to  prohibit,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  dis- 
criminations and  pooling.  Experience  has  shown  conclusively 
that  competition  between  railroads  involves  discrimination. 
Competition  in  the  railroad  business  means  in  practice  making 
special  rates  to  attract '  special  traffic.  But  experience  has 
shown  with  equal  conclusiveness  that  agreements  between 
railroads  designed  to  put  an  end  to  competition  can  only  be 
maintained  when  supplemented  by  pooling  contracts.  So 
long  as  the  proportion  of  freight  which  each  road  is  to  secure 
depends  upon  its  activity,  the  self-interest  of  railroad  managers, 
or  their  credulity  acted  upon  by  the  misrepresentations  of 
unscrupulous  shippers,  will  make  discrimination  in  rates  almost 
inevitable.  The  law  undertakes  to  enforce  two  lines  of  policy 
which  will  -not  run  together  so  long  as  different  railroads  act  as 
carriers  for  the  same  territorj^" 

The  amendments  made  and  authoritatively  proposed 
in  the  act,  as  well  as  its  judicial  interpretations,  for 
which  there  is  no  space  here,  are  also  well  summarized 
by  Professor  Seager.  Upon  the  success  of  the  Rate  Bill 
and  the  Interstate  Commerce  Law,  with  such  amend- 
ments as  they  may  receive,  probably  depends  the 
question  of  whether  the  railroads  and  public  utilities 
generally  throughout  the  country,  can  well  be  left 
under  private  management  with  government  control, 
or  whether  they  shall  be  bought  and  operated  by  the 
government. 

But  it  will  naturally  be  asked  :  if  govem- 
Zi^(n:).  unsuc-     mcnt  regulation  has  accomplished  so  little, 

cessfulness  of  ,     . -     °  ,  ,  i  ,  ,  ' 

government  regu-  and  if  govcmment  Operation  would  save 
'arglZ°nt'}oJ'''^'  the  wastes  of  competition,  why  not  avoid 
government  i\^q  qucstions  that  re(^7ilation  has  not  suc- 

ceeded with,  and  come  at  once  to  entire 
government  operation  ?  But  it  is  by  no  means  cer- 
tain that  government's  efforts,  tho  not  accomplishing 
all  they  aimed  at,  have  been  useless  in  leading  toward 
the  increasing  lowering  of  rates;  and  unfruitful  as  the 
attempt  at  regulation  has  been,  the  attempt  at  the 


§  3SSm]         Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  407 

vastly  harder  task  of  operation  would  probably  be 
equally  unsatisfactory.  There  are  two  hundred  thou- 
sand people  in  the  civil  service  now.  The  corruption 
involved  in  dealing  out  these  places  is  still,  despite 
all  the  efforts  of  the  civil-service  reformers,  among  the 
chief  obstructions  to  good  government.  The  railroads 
employ  four  times  as  many  men  as  the  civil  service; 
to  make  all  these  men  government  employees  would 
make  the  corruption  sixteen  times  as  great.  Their  votes 
would  simply  make  the  tail  wag  the  dog :  instead  of  the 
government  managing  the  roads,  the  roads  would  man- 
age the  government.  The  present  trimming  for  the 
"labor  vote"  is  nothing  compared  with  what  would 
grow  up   for  the  consolidated  railroad  vote    (400/2). 

Many  people  think  that  even  now  the  railroads  run 
the  government — especially  the  state  governments. 
But  as  long  as  the  roads  are  in  various  hands,  their  in- 
terests are  different,  and  they  pull  in  opposite  directions. 
Make  a  body  of  millions  of  placeholders  whose  interests 
are  identical;  if  they  would  not  have  their  own  way  in 
railroad  management  and  everything  else,  to  a  degree 
that  competition  prevents  anybody  from  having  it 
now,  it  could  be  only  because  politicians  no  longer 
stand  in  dread  of  voters.  The  Italian  experience  may 
not  be  conclusive,  but  it  is  at  least  suggestive. 

The  officers  of  the  roads  in  such  cases,  in  America, 
would  be  "favorite  sons"  and  "men  with  pulls".  The 
genius  for  railroad  management  that  now  fills  most  of 
the  presidencies  and  superintendencies  with  men  who 
began  at  the  brakes,  would  have  to  give  way  to  the 
genius  for  political  pulls;  the  roads,  the  shippers  and 
the  passengers  would  suffer  accordingly;  and  the  tax- 
paver  would  have  to  meet  the  deficits. 

The  effect  on  railroad  salaries  probably  would  be 
what  it  has  been  on  telegraph  salaries  in  England.  As 
soon  as  government  control  took  the  pressure  of  com- 
petition off,  salaries  advanced,  deficits  began,  and  the 
taxpayers  had  to  settle  them. 

Rates  would  be  governed  by  political  favoritism  in- 
stead of  the  exigencies  of  business. 


4o8  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§388^ 

The  experience  of  our  Canadian  neighbors  is  valuable 
in  this  connection.  The  Lon'don  Economist  states  that 
the  lines  the  government  has  built  in  Canada  are  located 
to  foster  constituencies,  not  trade;  there  was  much 
corruption  in  the  contracts ;  the  roads  have  been  run  as 
political  machines ;  much  improving  has  been  done  for 
the  sake  of  giving  contracts  to  political  allies;  cost  of 
operating  has  been  higher,  and  number  of  employees 
greater,  than  on  private  lines;  on  account  of  political 
pulls,  unfit  employees  are  retained,  and  favorable  rates 
are  given  to  friends  of  the  administration;  politicians 
back  enormous  claims  against  the  railways;  and  un- 
businesslike competition  to  help  political  favorites  has 
injured  private  roads. 

ggg  "Labor-  '^^^®  effect  of  government  operation  on 
under  goueniment  strikes  is  onc  of  the  most  important  points 
operation.  ^^  ^j^^  wliole  discussion.     Of  course  a  rail- 

road is  not  like  a  factory,  where  Labor  and  Ability  can 
have  their  quarrels  without  making  the  public  suffer: 
if  the  factory  stops,  the  public  can  get  unmonopolized 
goods  at  some  other  factory,  or  for  a  time  from  the 
stock  in  the  shops.  But  if  there  is  a  strike  on  a  railroad, 
the  public  must  simply  do  without  the  service  until 
matters  are  adjusted,  and  at  great  loss  of  money  and 
convenience.  This  certainly  gives  the  public,  as  rep- 
resented by  the  state,  a  right  to  prevent  quarrels  be- 
tween Labor  and  Ability  from  stopping  the  cars  (32). 
Government  operation  would  certainly  simplify  this 
matter.  We  do  not  hear  of  many  strikes  in  the  post- 
offices:  but  they  are  much  simpler  affairs,  and  require, 
in  large  part,  a  higher  type  of  Labor.  But  if  each  rail- 
road employee  were  a  government  servant,  resistance 
to  regulations,  or  refusal  to  work,  would  be  flat  rebellion, 
and  then  there  would  not  be  as  much  question  of  sup- 
pressing it  by  force  as  there  is  about  suppressing  strike- 
riots  now. 

It  is  impossible  to  tell  what  the  majority  of  the 
advocates  of  government  operation  of  the  roads  really 
want :    at  one  moment  they  seem  to  be  calling  for  gov- 


§  3S8  p]         Exira-AIiinicipal  Public  Works.  409 

eminent  control,  not  only  in  railroads  but  in  all  industry; 
and  as  soon  as  government  sends  police  or  militia,  or 
even  injunction,  to  enforce  control,  they  are  crying  out 
against  the  tyranny  of  it. 

There  is  much  difference  of  opinion  regarding  state 
operation  of  the  railways  in  New  South  Wales,  but 
there  is  no  difference  in  the  opinion  that  the  great 
strike  of  1903  was  better  handled  by  the  government 
than  it  could  have  been  handled  by  a  private  company. 
But  there  happened  to  be  a  strong  government,  which 
probably  would  have  backed  up  a  private  company 
with  all  needed  efficiency.  A  weak  government  would 
have  had  a  weak  result  in  either  case. 
388  ro;.  Improve-  There  seems  to  be  no  just  reason, 
ondet  prfuate^  liowever,  wliy  private  managers  of  rail- 
controi.  roads  should  not  contract  with  their  men 

for  definite  periods  of  service  or  definite  notice  before 
quitting,  and  especially  not  to  interfere  with  other 
men  taking  their  places.  But  the  unions  probably 
wou^ld  not  let  the  men  make  such  contracts,  and  if 
the  men  were  to  make  them,  they  have  no  estates  at 
peril  for  damages,  in  case  they  break  them.  There  is 
a  great  deal  of  honor  among  the  men — enough  to  sus- 
tain many  of  them  in  any  sacrifice  to  their  unions; 
but  that  very  feature  of  their  honor  tends  to  prevent 
it  sustaining  contracts  with  the  companies.  Yet  that 
is  not  true  of  all  classes  of  employees.  The  locomotive 
engineers  naturally  must  be  men  of  more  ability  than 
most  other  unionists,  and  they  quite  generally  stand 
by  their  agreements. 

There  has  been  a  great  deal  of  talk  of  government's 
protecting  the  public  by  declaring  conditions  upon 
388  Govern-  wliicli  Labor  must  accept  employment 
ment  control  of  under  pubHc  franchises,  just  on  the  same 
private  operations.  gj.Q^j^(^g  that  it  declares  conditions  upon 

which  Ability  must  operate  the  franchises.  The  propo- 
sition certainly  seems  fair.  Its  details  are  simply  to 
make  it  the  law  that  anybody  accepting  such  service 
shall  give  some  stipulated  notice  before  quitting  work, 
shall  not  interfere  with  anybody  taking  his  place,  and 


41  o  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§388^ 

shall  be  subjected  to  imprisonment  (fines  are  of  no  use 
against  people  who  have  no  money)  for  violation  or 
evasion  of  the  law.  There  are  now  of  course  general 
laws  against  violence  and  destruction  of  property,  and 
occasional  timid  laws  against  interfering  with  the  Right 
to  Work,  but  probably  there  is  no  law  against  a  laborer 
who  is  really  a  public  servant,  quitting  his  place  with- 
out notice.  Such  laws,  however,  would  not  be  counter 
to  the  XV.  Amendment  of  the  National  Constitution 
prohibiting  involuntary  servitude,  because  the  men 
would  enter  upon  the  obligations  voluntarily.  But 
undoubtedly  the  labor  agitators — especially  those  who 
make  their  living  out  of  strikes — would  in  the  first  place 
bitterly  oppose  such  laws;  and  if  the  laws  were  carried, 
would  try  to  dissuade  men  from  taking  service  under 
them.  But  such  laws  are  so  manifestly  fair  and  in  a 
good  direction,  that  it  is  certainly  worth  while  to 
attempt  them.* 

*  As  a  safeguard  in  such  matters.  Professor  Adams  recom- 
mends that  franchises  granted  to  public-service  corporations 
and  industries  with  a  "public  use"  shall  contain  the  following 
points : 

"Conditions  of  employment  to  be  fixed  for  annual  periods, 
some  time  in  advance,  by  collective  bargaining  between  repre- 
sentatives of  the  employers  and  employees,  as  provided  in  the 
Victorian  Wage  Boards  (described  on  his  page  496).  Where 
either  side  refuses  to  elect  representatives,  or  the  representatives 
refuse  to  elect  a  standing  arbiter  or  arbiters,  such  officials 
to  be  appointed  by  the  governor  or  by  the  courts. 

' '  Employment  in  such  industries  or  service  to  be  by  individual 
enlistment  or  contract  for  a  protracted  period,  say  three  months. 
Employers  and  employees  to  post  bonds  for  the  faithful  per- 
formance of  all  agreements.  The  bond  of  the  employees  to 
be  accumulated  by  retaining  a  percentage  of  their  wages,  as 
is  done  in  the  trade  agreement  between  Wichert  and  Gardiner, 
of  Brooklyn,  and  the  Independent  Union  of  Shoe-workers  of 
Greater  New  York  and  Vicinity. 

"Strikes,  picketing  and  boycotts  among  such  employees  to 
be  punished  as  criminal  conspiracies,  and  special  protection 
to  be  afforded  the  employer  in  case  of  strikes,  by  police,  militia 
and  injunctions. 

"Lockouts  to  be  declared  illegal,  with  provisions  for  the 
appointment  of  a  receiver  for  the  industry  when  its  operation 
is  discontinued." 


§  389]  Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  411 

Whatever  may  be  the  way  out,  it  is  as  certain  as 
anything  in  the  future  of  society  can  be,  that  the 
pubhc  will  not  long  endure  such  inconveniences  as  it 
has  lately  been  put  to  by  railroad  strikes;  not  to 
speak  of  the  coal  strike  and  the  beef  strike;  and  that, 
government  operation  or  not,  the  law  will  inevitably 
take  a  more  comprehensive  hold  on  the  matter,  and  that 
any  man  having  any  employment  at  all,  will  have  to 
recognize  some  duties  that  he  now  ignores.  (Compare 
the  treatment  of  the  subject  in  Chapter  XX.) 

If^nlVidslZ"'  -f^  ^^^  United  States,  cities,  states  and 
politics.  even  the  nation    have  given    "goverment 

aid"  for  building  railroads,  the  smaller  governments 
generally  by  money,  and  the  states  and  the  general 
government  by  land  granted  to  the  company  out  of 
the  public  domain,  which  the  company  could  sell  or 
mortgage.  In  Europe,  "state  aid"  consists  more  fre- 
quently in  the  state  building  and  running  the  railroads. 
England  can  hardly  be  said  to  give  any  aid  at  all:  for 
the  landholding  interests  in  Parliament  are  so  powerful 
that  England  does  not  give  the  roads  the  full  benefit  of 
eminent  domain ;  but  they  have  virtually  had  to  buy 
their  rights  of  way  for  whatever  landowners  hold  out  for. 
Nevertheless,  they  compare  favorably  in  financial  results 
and  facilities  to  the  public,  with  roads  owned  by  gov- 
ernment elsewhere. 

It  seems  plain  from  our  long  consideration,  that 
which  is  the  better  plan  depends  on  the  degree  of  civili- 
388  (r).  Tiie  con-  zatiou.  As  far  as  the  world  has  got,  the  best 
elusion.  present  means,  as  between  government  and 

private  initiative,  of  developing  railroads,  seems  to  be  to 
leave  the  building  and  running  of  them  to  individual 
initiative,  as  it  is  here  and  in  England,  with  cautious 
government  aid  when  really  desirable,  and  to  improve 
the  government  regulation  of  them. 

In  point  of  time,  the  conveniences  gov- 

andexpreVs°.^*^^      ernments  probably  began  supplying  next 

after  money  and  roads,  were  post-horses. 


412  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§388 

They  were  supplied  on  the  roads  as  early  as  Assyria. 
The  postal  system,  like  roads,  was  evolved  for  military 
reasons:  the  supplies  of  post-horses  along  the  roads 
was  begun  for  the  transmission  of  military  orders. 
389  (a).  City  At  first  sight,  there  appears  to  be  a  good 

versus  country,  ^q.^1  of  robbing  Peter  to  pay  Paul  in  the 
modern  postal  service — making  the  cities  pay  for  the 
remote  regions.  But  .there  is  really  not  as  much  as  ap- 
pears at  first  sight :  for  tho  three  quarters  of  the  expense 
of  the  postal  service  of  otxr  whole  country  is  in  trans- 
mission; in  thickly  settled  regions,  probably  more  than 
two  thirds  is  in  collecting  and  distributing,  and  less  than 
one  third  in  transporting.  Even  if  the  thickly  settled 
regions  entailed  more  expense  in  transporting  too,  the 
Peter-and-Paul  system  would  still  be  amply  justified. 
We  can  all  well  afford  to  be  taxed  for  such  an  agency  of 
civilization  as  the  mails.  But  in  some  respects  it  has 
gone  beyond  bounds. 

389^6;.  Favoritism  ^^  ^  pcrversion  of  the  American  demand 
to  papers  and  for  the  diffusion  of  intelligence,  the  govem- 
peno  icais  ment  is  now  losing  some  $12,000,000  an- 

nually in  carrying  advertisements  attached  to  magazines. 
This  it  does  at  a  cost  of  five  cents  a  pound  where  it 
receives  but  one  cent.  Most  of  this  money  goes  to  sub- 
sidizing a  business  outside  of  the  legitimate  periodicals 
that  has  grown  up  in  consequence  of  the  subsidy,  and 
which  consists  of  mere  pretexts  of  periodicals,  contain- 
ing no  literature  or  information  of  any  value — what 
there  is  is  mainly  the  product  of  scissors  and  paste-pot 
— the  whole  sandwiched  between  its  own  weight,  and 
sometimes  more  than  three  times  its  own  weight,  of 
advertising  pages,  these  latter  largely  devoted  to  worse 
than  useless  things,  and  often  to  abominations. 

The  circulation  of  the  class  of  periodicals  read  by 
those  who  will  peruse  these  pages,  amounts  to  less  than 
one  tenth  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  circulation  of  those 
which  the  government  spends  this  money  in  carrying; 
and  the  circulation  of  the  periodicals  of  an  humbler  but 
still  respectable  and  useful  character,  constitutes  not  one 
tenth  of  one  per  cent.  more.     The  rest  pander  only  to 


§  3^9^]  Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  413 

low  tastes,  while  the  government  subsidy  upholds  them 
in  competition  with  the  periodicals  that  ofEer  respectable 
matter,  and  limit  themselves  to  respectable  advertise- 
ments. Virtually  all  of  the  worthless  and  worse  than 
worthless  class  has  grown  up  under  the  government  sub- 
sidy, to  the  indirect  loss  of  the  better  class,  and  at  the 
direct  expense  of  the  whole  community. 

Every  dollar  paid  for  postage-stamps  contains  a 
contribution  of  eighty  cents  toward  these  subsidies.  If 
it  were  not  for  this  waste  in  subsidizing  the  lowest 
class  of  periodicals,  our  Post-Office  could  sell  letter- 
stamps  for  half  a  cent,  and  postal-cards  for  a  quarter  of 
a  cent,  and  realize  a  surplus  in  place  of  the  present 
regular  deficit. 

Such  subsidies  can  be  realized  only  by  large  circula- 
tion, and  the  most  effective  means  of  obtaining  large 
circulation,  of  course  is  low  price.  So  far,  the  two 
offset  each  other,  but  the  large  circulation  attracts 
heavy  advertising,  and  through  it  the  benefit  of  the 
subsidy  is  indirectly  realized.  The  five-  and  ten-cent 
magazines  actually  cost  for  paper  and  printing  more 
than  the  subscribers  pay.  The  deficit  and  an  enormous 
profit  are  paid  by  the  advertisers,  and  the  advertising 
pays  this  enormous  profit  because  the  government 
carries  it  at  a  fifth  of  what  it  costs  to  do  the  service. 

Where  the  Post-Office  charges  $100  to  carry  100,000 
two-page  circulars,  it  will  carry  100,000  copies  of  them 
paged  in  a  magazine  for  $2.  The  publisher  will  get,  at 
usual  rates,  $166,  out  of  which  he  must  pay  the  deficit  on 
his  sales  to  subscribers.  Leaving  this  out  of  account, 
his  gross  profit  on  each  leaf  (two  pages)  of  advertising, 
per  100,000  copies  (for  printing  and  paper  cannot  be 
over  $12)  is  $154.     Loss  to  the  government  $10. 

Postmaster-General  Smith  said  in  1901 :  "In  the  case 
of  hundreds  of  such  publications,  whenever  the  publisher 
expends  $1000  in  his  venture,  the  government  spends 
not  less  than  $2000  in  carrying  on  that  publisher's 
business."  One  publisher  sends  annually  nearly  5,000,- 
000  pounds  through  the  mails,  at  a  net  loss  to  the 
government  of  close  to  a  third  of  a  million  dollars. 


414  The  Promotion  oj  Convenience.  [§  3891: 

^_- ,  ,  .        The  United  States  is  the  only  great  nation 

3S9(c).  compared     ^.      ^  -^        ti       ^   r\ai  I  i  t 

with  other  that    runs   its    Post-Umce    at    a    loss,     in 

countries.  most   Other   civiHzed   countries,  the  rates 

on  periodicals  are  the  same  as  on  books.  Great  Britain 
publishes  about  4900  periodicals;  40,000  new  ones 
were  admitted  to  our  mails  in  the  years  1903-5.  These 
periodicals  of  ours  kill  books.  In  1902,  Germany  pub- 
lished 354  separate  books  to  the  million  inhabitants; 
France,  344,  Russia,  85;  the  United  States,  81.  Spain 
alone  of  the  alleged  civilized  countries,  published  less 
than  we  did — 66. 

Meanwhile  these  little  spurts  and  spasms 
3B9(d).  Damage     Qf  Hteraturc  sold  at  less  than  it  costs,  are 

to  literature.  ^      ■  ,  i  a  •  i        c 

unrittmg  the  American  people  tor  any 
reading  which  demands  and  repays  sustained  attention. 
The  people  are  giving  up  the  book-reading  habit,  and 
taking  to  magazines  instead.  Since  the  population  of 
the  country  has  been  doubling,  the  bookstores  have 
decreased  to  one-third.* 

389  fe).  Govern-  ^^'^^^  Carrying  mails  is  a  government 
went  versus  pri-  fuuctiou,  is  established  beyond  reasonable 
uate  enterprise.  ^iscussion.  But  in  Considering  what  other 
matters  are  to  become  government  functions,  it  is 
worth  while  to  bear  in  mind  three  considerations 
regarding  its  running  of  the  Post-Office.  First:  this 
heavy  waste  of  money  and  of  the  possible  popular  ca- 
pacity for  improving  reading,  would  be  impossible  if  the 
mails  had  been  carried  by  private  industry  for  profit. 
Second:  mails  (for  distributing  circulars)  are"  carried  in  all 
considerable  cities  by  private  industry  in  successful 
competition,  regarding  both  prices  and  efficiency,  with 
the  national  Post-Office.  Third:  if  the  mails  were 
carried  by  private  corporations,  there  would  be  redress 
for  failures.  This  paragraph  is  written  in  the  country, 
where  regular  communication  with  New  York  is  im- 
portant.    For  four  days  out  of  the  last  five,  mails  that 

*  For  most  of  the  facts  in  this  exposition  of  our  postal  policy, 
I  am  indebted  to  articles  by  Col.  C.  W.  Biirrows  in  respectively 
Construction  (Pittsburg)  for  June  10,  1905,  and  the  Yale 
Review  for  February,   1906. 


§39°]  Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  415 

were  due  in  the  morning  have  not  arrived  until  evening, 
and. there  is  no  redress. 

In  1906  the  United  States  government,  after  printing 
postage-stamps  for  fourteen  years,  returned  to  the 
habit  of  getting  them  from  private  companies,  because 
they  could  make  them  cheaper. 

In  Europe,  the  post-ofhces  are  not  confined  as  nearly 
as  ours,  to  handling  written  and  printed  matter:  they 
generally  do  everything  that  is  done  by  our  express 
companies.  But  that  state  service  is  not  as  good,  on 
the  whole,  as  the  service  of  our  express  companies. 
It  is  slow  and  unaccommodating,  and  apparently  the 
rush  of  American  express  business  would  swamp  it 
utterly.  Moreover,  on  the  Continent,  they  do  not  do 
even  their  work  with  letters  and  papers  as  well  as  ours 
is  done. 

389  (f).  Best  ^^^   people   write   vastly   more    letters 

where  people         than  any  other  people,  and  so  they  watch 
the  post-office  closer  (387,  392c),  and  de- 
mand higher  efficiency.* 

390.  Telegraph.  '^^'^^  European  and  Australasian  govern- 

ments do  the  telegraphing  entirely.  Their 
services  compare  very  favorably  with  ours  in  apparent 
cheapness,  but  not  in  actual  cheapness.  The  difference 
is  paid,  like  our  postal  deficit,  out  of  the  government 
budget — ultimately  the  taxes,  of  course. 

Despite  the  importance  of  our  government's  mail 
service,  it  probably  would  better  not  go  into  telegraph- 
ing. One  reason  is  that  the  people  generally  would 
not  watch  telegrams  as  they  do  letters :  fewer  people 
send  telegrams.  A  better  reason  is  that  the  private  com- 
panies on  the  whole  prbbably  do  it  cheaper.  As  already 
said,  the  English  government,  and  probably  the  others,  do 
it  as  we  do  our  post-office,  at  a  deficit;  and  the  demand 
for  telegraphic  service  is  not,  like  that  for  mail  service, 
of  such  infinite  importance  to  the  education  of  even 
those  who  do  not  use  it  much,  that  it  would  be  wise 
to  do  it  at  the  expense  of  the  taxpayers. 

*  Regarding  the  Post-Office,  see  also  p.  418. 


41 6  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  390 

Some  of  the  important  tendencies  of  government 
control  of  industries  were  so  well  and  so  entertainingly 
summed  up  in  a  Washington  letter  to  the  New  York 
Evening  Post  during  the  great  coal  strike,  and  carry- 
so  much  instruction  regarding  the  conditions  of  govern- 
ment work  inevitable  in  the  present  stage  of  political 
capacity,  that  it  is  well  worth  while  to  give  space  to 
some  extracts.  A  word  has  been  changed  here  and 
there  for  the  sake  of  the  connection. 

"  Suppose  the  government  were  in  the  coal-mining  business, 
how  would  the  employees  be  selected? 

"  They  would  be  appointed  on  the  patronage,  or  influence, 
basis,  by  quotas  according  to  States  and  Congressional  districts. 
Then,  after  the  followers  of  those  in  poUtical  control  had  been 
given  positions,  the  coal-mines  would  be  put  into  'the  classified 
service',  to  insure  a  life  position  practically  for  the  favorites 
thus  selected. 

"  How  would  their  services  terminate? 

"  By  death.  Age  or  incapacity  would  not  serve  as  a  disquali- 
fication ;  sympathy  for  the  needs  of  an  employee  would  prevent 
his  severance  from  the  pay-roll,  and  anj^  civil  pension  or  retire- 
ment fund  would  be  dismissed  as  un-American. 

"  What  would  be  the  rate  of  compensation? 

"  In  the  higher  grades  of  work,  too  low  to  obtain  the  right  kind 
of  men.  And  yet  it  would  not  be  safe  to  make  the  compensation 
adequately  high,  as  this  would  mean  a  correspondingly  enhanced 
prize  for  the  political  heelers.  In  the  lower  rounds  of  the 
ladder,  however,  the  compensation  would  always  be  consider- 
ably more  than  in  private  employment. 

"  How  would  the  work  of  mining  be. supervised? 

"  There  would  be  permanent  and  efficient  employees,  bearing 
the  title  of  'deputy  somebody'  or  'administrative  assistant 
this',  who  would  get  moderate  salaries,  and  upon  whom  the 
real  responsibility  would  rest.  Above  them  would  be  a  class  of 
supervisors,  politicians,  at  about  twice  the  salary,  changing 
with  the  administration  of  the  Federal  Government,  and 
knowing  little  or  nothing  about  the  business. 

"  What  would  be  the  relation  of  the  government  mines  to 
machinery,  and  progress  in  mechanical  appliances? 

"  One  of  non-intercourse. 

"  Who  would  look  after  the  details  upon  which  economical 
administration  rests? 

"  Nobody.  It  would  be  unfair  to  assign  any  man  with  a 
political  future  to  so  unpopular  a  position.  Hardly  any 
economy  of  administration  in  a  mill  or  a  mine  can  be  suggested 
which  does  not  hurt  somebody's  feelings  or  intrench  upon 
personal  profit  or  interest. 


§  39°]  Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  417 

"What  would  be  the  relation  of  the  mine  employees  to 
politics  ? 

"They  would  organize  into  a  union,  and  employ  lobbyists 
to  intimidate  Congress  into  raising  their  salaries,  extend  their 
vacations,  and  procure  for  them  various  privileges. 

"  How  would  the  rnine  get  its  supplies? 

"  On  contract  competitive  bids  where  honest  men  were  in 
charge  of  the  administration.  Otherwise  the  specifications 
would  go  out  so  worded  as  to  throw  business  into  the  hands 
of  friends  who  happened  to  possess  certain  articles,  or  to  hold 
an  agency  or  monopoly  on  them.  Then  the  price  would  be 
made  whatever  the  traffic  could  bear. 

"  How  much  would  it  cost  to  mine  coal  under  these  circum- 
stances ? 

"  From  two  to  three  times  what  it  costs  now. 

"Would  the  American  consumers,  then,  be  charged  $20  a 
ton  for  coal? 

"By  no  means;  they  would  be  charged  $6  a  ton,  and  the 
rest  of  the  cost  would  be  made  up  through  general  taxation, 
the  m.ethods  of  bookkeeping  employed  being  such  as  to  disguise 
the  operation. 

"  How  would  the  public  view  such  a  management  of  the  coal- 
mines? 

"  With  supreme  satisfaction.  The  labor  unions  would  like 
it,  because  they  would  have  complete  control  there  as  against 
disputed  control  in  outside  employments.  They  would  cite 
the  anthracite  mines  as  a  great  example,  upon  the  basis  of 
which  they  would  ask  to  have  the  wood-chopping  industry  of 
the  country  absorbed  by  the  Federal  Government.  Politicians 
would  like  it  because  it  would  give  places  and  positions  which 
they  could  control.  The  Sunday-school  weeklies  would  teem 
with  illustrations  of  the  heroisms  of  Uncle  Sam's  servants  in 
the  coal-mines.  Congressional  oratory  would  exhaust  itself  in 
eulogies  of  the  ability  of  the  government,  and  of  the  orator's 
own  party,  to  meet  great  questions,  to  do  things,  to  accomplish 
something,  and  to  leave  carping  and  criticism  to  outsiders  and 
Mugwuinps.  Those  who  had  failed  in  private  business  would 
especially  derive  satisfaction  from  the  thought  that,  in  an 
enterprise  in  which  they  were  stockholders,  the  Morgans  and 
the  Wanamakers  were  being  distanced.  The  patriotic  people  of 
every  class  and  condition  would  rejoice  in  the  reflection  that 
whatever  the  United  States  did  was  done  right.  The  stray, 
solitary  man  who  challenged  this  view  would  be  almost  ostracised. 
It  is  better  to  be  a  patriot  than  a  pessimist. 

"  Would  the  operation  of  these  mines  lead  to  application  of 
the  same  principle  to  the  management  of  beef-raising,  or  of 
selling  groceries? 

"  Undoubtedly.  The  United  States,  with  its  unbounded 
resources,  is  rich  enough  to  carry  the  load  of  wasteful  pro- 
duction in  a  considerable  number  of  industries. 


41 8  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  390 


\GOVERNMENT    MANAGEMENT    IN    OTHER   LINES. 

"  Not  an  answer  has  been  given  which  is  not  sustained  by  an 
abundance  of  experience  in  the  present  dealings  of  the  United 
States  Government.  We  have  a  printing-office  here  of  4000 
employees,  whose  lack  of  modern  machinery  and  other  appliances 
of  economical  production  is  such  that  the  printer's  art  would 
look  backward  with  a  vengeance  were  all  the  publishing  busi- 
ness of  the  country  put  on  a  similarly  socialistic  basis.  The 
control  of  the  labor  unions  there  is  absolute.  Uniformity  of 
work  and  wages  is  practically  complete.  Its  employees,  selected 
on  the  spoils  basis,  have  been  given  permanency  by  'civil- 
service  reform'.  Not  a  bureau  of  the  Federal  Government, 
within  present  recollection,  has  been  established  on  any  other 
basis.  The  census  clerks  were  thus  employed,  and  civil- 
service  reform  onlj^  comes  in  at  a  late  date  to  act  as  an  em- 
balming agent.  The  rural  free-delivery  service  has  afforded  to 
the  spoils  system  a  grand  debauch,  and  yet  the  present  Presi- 
dent is  a  good  friend  of  the  merit  system.  Civil-service  reform 
was  never  healthier  than  now,  and  still  its  practical  conquests 
have  been  small. 

"  The  Post-Office  Department  shows  some  wonderful  results 
in  the  way  of  celerity,  security,  and  certainty  wherever  it  has 
clung  to  the  coat-tails  of  private  enterprise,  as  in  the  fast  mail 
trains  of  our  competing  railroads,  and  in  its  belated  employ- 
ment of  pneumatic  tubes.  Wherever  it  has  done  things  itself 
it  has  done  them,  badly.  It  was  chased  for  years  by  the  invent- 
ors of  canceling-machines,  until  finally,  surrounded  and  over- 
come, it  most  reluctantly  surrendered.  The  private  manager 
would  have  chased  the  canceling-machine,  just  as  Commodore 
Vanderbilt  offered  a  prize  to  anybody  who  would  invent  the 
brake  he  needed. 

"  No  student  of  postal  affairs  can  take  seriously  the  deficit 
of  record.  The  actual  one,  with  the  free  rent  of  millions  upon 
millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  property,  owned  and  cared  for  and  re- 
paired out  of  the  general  funds  of  the  government,  would  be 
worth  while.  A  score  of  items  enter  into  the  calculation  which 
prevent  the  postal  deficit  from  being  regarded  as  more  than  a 
pleasant  fiction  of  the  Department.  The  letter-carriers  are  to-day 
welded  into  a  union,  and  have  sent  one  of  their  number,  accord- 
ing to  current  report,  to  California  to  try  to  defeat  Congress- 
man Loud  for  reelection,  because  he  had  opposed  an  increase 
in  their  salaries.  The  organization  does  not  suggest  that  there 
is  any  lack  of  competent  men  at  the  present  rates,  but  merely 
deems  its  proper  salary  that  which  through  political  manipula- 
tion it  is  able  to  get.  And  still  the  post-office  is  the  great 
American  idol. 

"  The  government  receives  ninety-three  cents  a  pound  for 
carrying   yotir   letters   and   postal   cards.     A   private   concern 


§39°]  Extra-Municipal  Public  Works.  419 

could  afford  to  pay  millions  a  year  for  the  monopoly'  privilege 
of  carrying  letters  at  half  the  present  rates.  The  Department  is 
'squealing  '  all  the  time  because  it  has  to- carry  the  newspapers 
so  cheap — a  cent  a  pound — and  yet  the  express  companies, 
those  boasted  monsters  of  monopoly  and  watered  stock,  are 
competing  in  certain  ranges  of  territory  for  that  very  business. 
It  is  too  bad  that  Australasia  is  so  far  away  that  its  pitiable 
and  dreary  experiments  in  state  socialism  may  not  be  more 
readily  available  for  our  guidance." 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

PUBLIC    WORKS    (continued). 

Municipal* 

391.  Street  Rail-  I^  street-car  accommodations,  America 

ways.  leads    the    great    nations    immeasurably. 

And  yet  America  did  not  have  the  first  electric  cars. 
Germany  had  the  first,  but  America  has 
introduced  them  much  the  fastest  of  all 
the  countries.  Germans  wait  for  their  paternal  govern- 
ment to  take  care  of  them,  and  governments  move 
slowly;  Americans  see  chances  to  make  money,  and 
take  care  of  themselves  promptly.  Germany's  having 
the  first  electric  cars  did  not  result  from  her  being 
the  European  leader  in  street  railways.  Great  Britain 
was  the  leader,  especially  in  Scotland.  In  municipal 
Z9](b).  Municipal  Operation,  too,  she  was  the  leader,  but 
operation  increas-  in  a  qualified  way,  like  that  of  the  French 

ing  in  England,  .,       '■-        /    n  n       \  t  n  •         r^        ,i  i 

little  on  Continent,  railroads  (388  o).  in  1899,  1^  Scotland, 
in  America  none,  two-thirds  of  the  strcct  railways  were 
owned  by  the  cities,  and  leased  to  the  companies  oper- 

*  In  this  chapter  my  obligations  to  Dr.  Albert  Shaw's  two 
volumes  on  "Municipal  Government"  are  so  many  that  to 
acknowledge  each  one  would  require  including  his  name  in 
nearly  every  page.  I  am  also  indebted  for  much  recent  informa- 
tion regarding  the  United  States,  to  Professor  Zueblin's  "  Ameri- 
can Municipal  Progress",  and  to  the  Proceedings  of  the  Na- 
tional Municipal  League,  especially  the  volume  for  1906.  This 
organization  well  deserves  the  support  of  every  good  citizen, 
and  its  future  volumes  may  be  expected  to  be  mines  of  valuable 
experience  and  suggestion.  Their  usefulness  has  been  increas- 
ing at  a  geometrical  rate. 

420 


§391^]  Municipal  Public  Works.  421 

ating  them;  and  in  England  and  Ireland,  one-third. 
As  said  before,  it  is  very  important  to  keep  in  mind 
the  difference  between  municipal  ownership  and 
municipal  operation.  The  first  is  almost  universally 
approved;    the  second  very  widely  questioned. 

At  first  Parliament  forbade  the  cities  to  operate 
their  roads.  In  1882  one  city — Huddersfield,  was  per- 
mitted to  operate  its  railways.  Since  then,  up  to  1899, 
about  twenty  cities  have  obtained  the  right,  and  as 
the  companies'  leases  are  now  rapidly  falling  in,  many 
more  are  applying  for  it.  Towns  owning  electric 
plants  were  particularly  anxious  to  use  them  on  their 
railroads,  before,  in  1899,  there  began  a  violent  opposition 
to  "municipal  trading"  as  they  call  it  (400  h,  414  a). 

Sometime  since,  London  began  operating  the  trams 
in  the  Southern  section.  The  results  have  been  dis- 
astrous. The  net  income  for  the  year  ending  March  31, 
1906,  was  but  a  tenth  of  that  from  the  Northern  sec- 
tion, operated  by  a  private  company:  there  appears  to 
be  abundant  evidence  of  graft — a  thing  until  lately 
almost  unknown  in  London. 

Virtually  all  the  European  cities  get  large  revenues 
from  the  street  railways,  even  when  they  do  not  run 
them  themselves.  The  Hamburg  railways  pay  more 
to  the  city  than  to  their  stockholders. 

There  is  little,  if  any,  municipalization  on  the  Conti- 
nent. But  minute  regulation  for  frequency  of  cars, 
plenty  of  seating-room,  etc.,  is  almost  universal.  There, 
however,  political  regulation  is  easier,  and  more  people 
live  in  the  cities  where  they  work,  and  even  in  the  same 
buildings,  than  in  Great  Britain  or  America.  Therefore 
there  is  not  as  great  need  of  street  railways  or  as  great 
crowding  of  them.  But  if  our  people  were  to  get  more  in 
the  way  of  living  near  their  businesses,  probably  it 
would  not  relieve  the  frightful  overcrowding  and  dis- 
comfort of  the  street  railways:  for  the  companies 
would  simply  run  fewer  cars;  they  would  not  run  any 
more  cars  than  they  could  run  at  a  big  profit,  until 
they  were  compelled  to. 

This  of  course  is   an  argument  for  the  cities  taking 


42  2  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  391  h 

the  roads  by  eminent  domain,  and  operating  them, 
but  that  ought  not  to  be  necessary.  The  cities  could 
compel  decent  accommodations  from  the  companies, 
if  the  art  of  politics  and  the  quality  of  the  suffrage 
were  up  to  it:  it  is  done  in  many  places  in  Europe  (426— 
426  b).  Already  some  charters  here  have  made  one  hope- 
ful condition  for  safety-^that  the  employees  shall  have 
enough  time  for  sleep.  Our  companies  have  inspectors 
Z^\  (Or  Need  of  constantly  walking  along  their  lines  or 
constant  govern-  riding  sliort  distances  in  their  cars,  to  see 
mspec  ion.  ^^^^^  things  are  conducted  in  the  interest 
of  the  owners.  Why  should  not  the  people  have  similar 
inspectors  to  see  that  things  are  conducted  in  the  interest 
of  the  people — that  cars  are  run  with  reasonable  safety, 
cleanliness,  politeness  and  frequency — not  as  at  present, 
from  the  Madison  Avenue  line  in  New  York  down  through 
most  lines  in  the  United  States,  just  infrequently 
enough,  even  in  slack  hours,  to  keep  the  cars  over- 
crowded? Mayor  Cutler  of  Rochester  asks  the  authority 
to  appoint  a  Commissioner  of  Public  Utilities  who  shall 
supervise  them  all,  and  receive  all  complaints,  with 
power  to  call  for  papers  and  accounts,  investigate  under 
oath,  and  redress  all  grievances. 

Some  answers  to  the  question  in  the  preceding  para- 
graph are  not  far  to  seek:  one  is  the  slowness  of  legis- 
latures and  city  councils  in  providing  the  statutes  and 
ordinances  obviously  required  for  the  public  conven- 
ience— a  slowness  aided  by  corruption  from  the  com- 
panies. Another  reason  is  the  probability  that  even  if 
the  laws  and  the  inspectors  to  help  enforce  them  were 
provided,  the  inspectors  would  be  bought  off.  When 
the  government  is  unable  to  provide  even  this  moderate 
regulation  of  the  roads,  what  of  its  capacity  to  manage 
them  entirely? 

391  (d).  Municipal  In  America,  until  very  lately,  most  of 
td'uandng  tn"^^^  the  citics  simply  gave  away  the  franchises. 
America.  Chicago's    street    railway    franchises    are 

easily  worth  $75,000,000,  and  the  city  never  had  any- 
thing from  them.  Even  during  the  early  years  of 
this  century,  Mayor  Arkbridge  of  Philadelphia  ignored 


§  39^  ^]  Municipal  Public  Works.  423 

a  responsible  offer  of  $2,500,000  for  privileges  which 
were  subsequently  given  to  existing  companies.  Yet 
the  companies  had  before  turned  all  the  streets  their 
tracks  went  through,  from  cobblestones  to  asphalt. 
Baltimore  in  i860  sold  her  franchises  for  a  fifth  of 
the  fares.  Later  it  was  reduced  to  nine  per  cent. 
The  proceeds  take  care  of  all  the  parks,  and  have 
already  bought  several  new  ones.  Cincinnati,  Provi- 
dence and  Richmond  receive  five  per  cent,  of  the  fares. 
Some  other  cities  get  revenue  from  the  roads  in  vari- 
ous ways,  and  the  tendency  to  do  so  is  becoming 
general. 

391  (e).  Ownership  The  United  States  has  as  yet  no  munici- 
in  America.  pg^j  Operation.     Up  to  1907  the  only  notice- 

able cases  even  of  municipal  ownership,  were  Boston's 
ownership  of  her  subway,  and  New  York's  ownership 
of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  railway,  both  of  which  the 
cities  leased  to  the  operating  companies.  But  New 
York  has  loaned  her  credit  to  a  private  company 
to  build  the  subway,  which,  after  a  long  lease,  is  to  be 
accepted  in  payment  of  the  loan.  It  is  claimed  that 
the  Boston  subway  is  paying  interest  on  its  bonds,  and 
has  a  surplus  for  a  sinking  fund  that  will  pay  off  the  prin- 
cipal before  the  debt  matures,  leaving  the  city  the  valu- 
able source  of  revenue  free  of  all  liability.  Early  in  '99, 
Detroit  was  preparing  to  buy  all  her  street  railways. 
But  the  courts  had  already  waked  up  some  opposing 
amendments  of  the  state  constitution  that  were  passed 
when  the  state  had  heavy  losses  in  the  infancy  of  steam- 
railway  building.  Unless  the  constitution  is  again 
amended,  these  render  government  ownership  impos- 
sible. Yet  the  city  has  lately  taken  possession  of  the 
tracks  of  a  new  company,  with  threats  to  destroy  them; 
and  the  matter  is  before  the  courts.  In  Cleveland  in 
1899  the  problem  was  enlarged  by  a  great  and  destruc- 
tive strike,  with  dynamite  and  boycott  of  people  riding 
in  the  cars. 

Since  1897  Cleveland  has  been  making  a  fight  for 
a  three-cent  fare.  The  old  combine  running  the 
street   railroads,  and   running   them   well,  has  fought 


424  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  391  ^ 

the  matter  up  to  the  United  States  Supreme  Court. 
Mayor  "Tom"  Johnson  has  at  last  developed  an  inde- 
pendent company  running  on  one  street  at  a  three-cent 
fare,  and  himself  acted  as  motorman  on  the  first  car. 
He  fought  for  this  line  through  twenty-five  injunctions, 
and  the  twenty-sixth  that  is  now  impending  in  the 
Supreme  Court.  If  he  gets  the  decision,  he  will  spread 
the  new  line  into  regions  now  monopolized  by  the  old 
company.  He  forced  the  old  company  for  a  time  to 
sell  seven  tickets  for  a  quarter,  and  to  give  a  very  higli 
class  of  accommodation,  but  the  five-cent  fare  has 
just  been  restored. 

San  Francisco  lately  took  a  line  whose  franchise  had 
expired,  but  the  voters  refused  to  operate  it. 

The  voters  of  Seattle  in  1906  refused  to  authorize 
bonds    for   building   municipal    car-lines. 

There    are    two    main    reasons    alleged    in    favor   of 
municipal  operation. 
,„,  ,f,   .  .        First,  it  is  generally  realized  that  mon- 

Z^\(f).  Argument  '  &  r  ■'     ,-,        ■,  nj.       r     .-, 

for  municipal  opolies  Will  be  run  lor  the  benefit  01  the 
operation.  owners,  and  it  is  claimed  that  the  only  way 

to  have  them  run  for  the  benefit  of  the  public,  is  for  the 
public  to  do  the  running  The  weak  point  in  that  reason- 
ing is  that  here  in  America,  with  our  large  ignorant  and 
venal  vote,  the  public  is  generally  run  by  the  politicians, 
so  that  if  the  monopolies  are  nominally  run  for  the 
benefit  of  the  public,  they  will  really  be  run  for  the 
benefit  of  the  politicians, 
on,,  ,    .      .  In  I  go  1^,  Mayor  Dunne  of  Chicago,  who 

39Ug).  American     ,        .  -.      ^     ^\       ^\     ,  .     .        ,.         ,,  ,  , 

and  European  had  been  clcctcd  to  municipalize  the  street 
conditions.  railways,   got  an  expert,   Mr.   Dalrymple, 

over  from  Glasgow,  to  get  the  benefit  of  his  experience. 
His  opinion  regarding  municipal  operation  in  America 
underwent  some  changes  during  his  stay  among  us. 
When  he  arrived,  he  said: 

' '  I  see  no  reason  why  Chicago,  or  any  other  city  in  this  country, 
should  not  be  able  to  own  its  street  railways  and  to  run  them 
with  as  much  success  as  we  have  achieved  at  Glasgow.  I  ad- 
mit that  the  proposition  at  Chicago  is  a  much  larger  one  than 
the  one  we  had  to  tackle,  but  at  the  bottom  it  is  the  same.  .  .  . 


§39^^]  Municipal  Public  Works.  425 

"The  people  of  Glasgow  would  not  go  back  to  the  old  days 
of  private  ownership  tor  anything  in  the  world.  I  am  not 
saying  that  a  company  could  not  do  as  well  by  the  public.  I 
know,  in  fact,  that  it  could,  but  it  would  be  doing  so  with  a 
somewhat  different  end  in  view.  For  a  company  has  always  the 
shareholders  to  consider.  And  I  have  to  admit  that  you  will 
find  people  in  Glasgow  to-day — quite  influential  people,  too — 
who  say  that  the  street-car  service  is  not  profitable." 

After  he  had  become  acquainted  with  our  democratic 
ways,  he  said: 

"To  put  street  railroads,  gasworks,  telephone  companies, 
etc.,  under  municipal  ownership  would  be  to  create  a  political 
machine  in  every  large  city  that  would  be  simply  impregnable. 
These  political  machines  are  already  strong  enough  with  their 
control  of  policemen,  firemen,  and  other  ofiice-holders. 

"If,  in  addition  to  this,  they  could  control  the  thousands  of 
men  employed  in  the  great  public-utility  corporations,  the 
political  machines  would  have  a  power  that  could  not  be  over- 
thrown. I  came  to  this  country  a  believer  in  public  ownership 
[operation?].  What  I  have  seen  here,  and  I  have  studied  the 
situation  carefully,  makes  me  realize  that  private  ownership 
[operation?]  under  proper  conditions  is  far  better  for  the  citizens 
of  American  cities." 

Chicago  is,  in  1907,  in  the  very  safe  position  of  having 
from  the  legislature  power  to  own  street  railways,  but 
none  to  operate  them. 

Nevertheless,    it    is    to     be    considered 

(h).  asgow.  ^Yi'Sit  in  the  report  of  the  Glasgow 
tramways  for  the  year  ending  May  i,  1905,  prepared 
by  this  same  IVIr.  Dalrymple,  it  is  stated  that 
"the  total  revenue  was  ^764,790  and  the  working 
expenses  £3^7,167,  which  leaves  a  profit  of  £377,623  or 
13.6  per  cent,  on  the  capital  expenditure  of  £2,763,381." 
These  facts  are  quoted  by  a  writer  to  the  New  York 
Times  in  January,  1906.     He  adds: 

"Deduct  both  interest  on  capital,  ;i^59,9o6,  and  sinking  fund, 
;£46,9i9.  Also  deduct  the  local  taxes,  which  have  been  in- 
creased from  £2,485  to  £^8,^16  per  annum  since  the  city 
took  over  the  lines,  and  the  2*5 .434  exacted  by  the  Imperial 
Government  as  income-tax  on  the  profits,  besides  the  £2^,000 
paid  to  the  city  chest  as  a  rental  for  the  streets,  and  remember- 
ing that  out  of  revenue  the  lines  were  kept  in  a  perfect  state 


426  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  391  /^ 

of  repair,  there  was  left  a  surplus  absolutely  net  of  ;^202,o38, 
7  per  cent,  on  the  capital. 

"  The  Tramways  Committee  is  so  ultra-conservative  and  so 
anxious  that  its  rich  profits  shall  not  be  raided  too  fast  for 
'the  parks  and  popular  free  music'  that  it  puts  a  part  of  this 
surplus  down  in  the  books  as  'permanent-way  renewals  fund 
and  depreciation',  tho  it  has  provided  beforehand  both  for 
upkeep  and  sinking  fund. 

' '  The  truth  is  that  the  municipal  street  railways  are  so  fabu- 
lously rich  that  the  managers  are  afraid  in  some  cases  to  let  the 
people  know  all  at  once  what  gold-mines  they  have  got,  lest 
they  should  lose  their  balance  and  abolish  fares  altogether. 
Mr.  Bellamy,  the  able  General  Manager  of  the  Liverpool  system, 
told  me  in  September  that  on  their  lines  they  pay  off  yearly 
10  per  cent,  of  the  real  capital  cost,  tho  the  city  has  increased 
the  average  length  of  the  2 -cent  stage  240  per  cent,  since  it 
acquired  the  lines,  and  has  reduced  the  average  fare  40  per 
cent.,  a  gain  to  the  traveling  public  of  $1,500,000  a  year.  'The 
fact  is,  Martin',  he  said,  'the  financial  position  is  so  rosy  that 
we  dare  not  expose  it  fully.  We  are  accumulating  a  surplus 
which  will  make  us  impregnable  to  all  the  assaults  of  fortune, 
and  then  we  shall  bring  down  fares  with  a  rush.' " 

391  <i)  Great  There   is   much  evidence  on   the   other 

Britain  versus  sidc,  as  will  be  scen  later.  But  the  con- 
flict of  evidence  does  not  seem  to  forbid 
the  beHef  that  municipal  tramways  have  succeeded 
in  Great  Britain.  But  if  there  were  no  conflict  at 
all,  it  would  still  be  far  from  proved  that  similar 
success  would  attend  their  operation  in  the  United 
States  at  our  present  stage  of  political  evolution.  Great 
Britain,  unlike  us,  has  a  restricted  municipal  suffrage,  no 
confusion  of  national  with  municipal  politics,  almost 
entire  freedom  from  municipal  graft — at  least  until 
something  like  it  has  begun  to  appear  in  connection  with 
municipal  trading;  and  a  set  of  social  conditions  under 
which  cooperative  trading  has  grown  to  great  success, 
and  even  cooperative  production  has  reached  some  re- 
spectable success — neither  of  which  evidences  of  coopera- 
tive capacity  have  our  people  ever  succeeded  in  demon- 
strating. Farther  evidence  on  the  British  conditions 
will  be  given  later. 

Mr.  Dalrymple's  expert  opinion,  however,  loses  sight 
of  the  distinction  between  ownership  and  operation, 
and  does  not  necessarily  preclude  municipal  ownership. 


§  39^^]  Municipal  Public  Works.  427 

The  fact  seems  to  be  that  if  politics  were  sufficiently 
advanced  to  own  and  operate  the  roads,  it  would  be 
sufficiently  advanced  to  regulate  them  without  owning 
and  operating.  In  Washington,  where  Congress  can  do 
anything  with  the  roads  that  it  pleases,  and  where  local 
graft  is  too  small  to  control  Congress,  they  are  run  very 
well. 

The  efforts  of  Mayor  Head  of  Nash- 
391  (j).  as  uiiie.  ^-jjg^  show  what  good  government  with- 
out operation,  or  even  ownership,  can  accomplish. 
About  the  opening  of  the  century  the  street-railway 
company  claimed  a  perpetual  franchise.  After  a 
bitter  and  expensive  fight  in  the  courts,  he  got  them 
to  agree  to  sell  out  at  any  time  after  twenty  years 
should  have  elapsed,  at  a  prescribed  method  of 
valuation,  after  a  year's  notice;  to  pay  the  city  ten 
thousand  dollars  for  failing  to  keep  the  streets  through 
which  they  passed  in  condition  during  the  litigation; 
to  give  the  city  a  park  costing  $125,000;  to  pay  the 
city  two  per  cent,  of  their  gross  income  till  it  should 
reach  a  million  dollars  a  year,  and  three  per  cent  there- 
after; to  spend  a  million  and  a  half  dollars  in  rehabili- 
tating their  plant,  which  had  been  permitted  to  run 
down  during  the  preceding  three  years;  to  give  uni- 
versal transfers;  to  run  all  cars  under  a  central  shed 
where  transfers  could  be  facilitated;  and  to  keep  the 
street  between  their  tracks  and  for  two  feet  outside, 
in  as  good  condition  as  the  city  keeps  the  rest  of  the 
streets.  The  company  spent  a  million  more  than  was 
stipulated,  has  enabled  the  city  to  keep  up  its  parks 
and  buy  more  (it  had  none  before  the  agreement) ;  has 
given  good  service;  and  its  securities  have  more  than 
doubled  in  value. 

In  Rochester  the  Board  of  Health  has 
forced  the  railways  to  provide  good  cars, 
and  has  prevented  freight-cars  from  running  dtiring 
the  crowded  hours  between  6  a.m.  and  8  p.m.  In  that 
city  there  were  a  great  many  franchises  unused,  but 
held  onto  in  order  to  keep  competition  out,  as  are 
many  municipal  franchises  of  all  sorts  in  England. 


428  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  391  / 

One  strong  reason  for  municipalization  is  a  very  sound 
argument  for  ownership,  but  hardly  touches  on  opera- 
391  (I)  The  "in-  ^ion.  It  is  that,  as  the  cities  grow,  the 
crement'- in  business  of  the  roads  increases,  and  more- 

franchises.  ovcr  it  increases  without  a  proportionate 

increase  in  the  expense — no  greater  managerial  ability  is 
needed,  and  cars  are  less  and  less  apt  to  run  partly 
filled;  in  this  way,  there  rolls  up  a  sort  of  double 
"unearned  increment"  (74)  of  which  the  public  should 
have  the  benefit. 

It  may  be  asked :  why  is  the  public  any  better  entitled 
to  this  unearned  increment  than  to  that  on  land?  For 
the  very  reason  that  each  landowner  is  entitled  to  the 
increment  on  his  own  land.  There  is  no  question  about 
the  public  being  the  owner  (unless  it  has  given  it  away, 
or  sold  it,  as  to  the  purpose)  of  the  land  on  which  the 
street  railway  runs — of  the  instrument  wdiich  produces 
the  increment;  and  as,  when  that  instrument  is  a 
natural  monopoly,  the  enthusiasm  and  competition  of 
individual  ownership  cannot  be  applied  to  it  anyhow, 
there  is  no  need  for  the  public  ever  to  part  with  it. 
On  the  other  hand,  without  the  enthusiasm  and  com- 
petition of  individual  ownership  in  ordinary  land,  we 
would  never  have  got  beyond  the  barbaric  conditions 
universal  among  peoples  where  private  ownership,  of 
land  does  not  exist  (75). 

As  securing  the  unearned  increment  of 
leased  but  Tot  ^  the  franchises  to  the  public,  much  is  to  be 
sold,  and  be  under  ^^:^^  :^^  favor  of  the  reccut  EngHsh  method, 

one  management.  r     ■,        ^t  -^t      ^  i  i 

and  that  of  the  New  York  subway,  under 
which  the  city  retains  the  ownership  of  the  roads,  or  at 
least  of  the  franchises  (it  may  not  be  necessary  for  the 
city  to  build  the  roads),  and  leases  them  to  companies. 
That  seems  to  be  better  suited  to  our  degree  of  political 
development,  even  tho  England  may  be  ready  for  the 
farther  step  of  the  cities  operating  the  roads  themselves. 
Retaining  a  share  of  the  receipts,  as  Baltimore,  Cincin- 
nati, Providence,  Nashville,  Richmond  and  an  increas- 
ing number  of  other  cities  do,  is  only  one  form  of  lease. 
There  is  a  reason  for  the  public  sharing  in  profits 


§391^0  Municipal  Public  Works.  429 

rather  than  receipts:  sharing  receipts,  regardless  of 
whether  a  profit  were  reahzed  or  not,  would  discourage 
making  new  roads;  besides,  as  already  shown,  profits 
increase  faster  than  receipts.  There  is  an  apparent 
reason  the  other  way,  in  the  fact  that  bookkeeping  can 
juggle  profits;  but  it  ought  to  be  easy  to  guard  against 
that. 

To  encourage  companies  to  make  the  roads  even  if  they 
had  to  give  them  up  in  time,  the  rent  could  be  made 
low  because  of  the  reversion,  just  as  in  other  leases, 
or  the  lessor  could  have  the  option  of  paying  for  the 
lessee's  improvements  or  renewing  his  lease. 

As  stated  in  several  cases  before,  it  is  desirable  that 
the  roads  of  any  city  should  all  be  under  one  control, 
to  save  duplication  of  roads  and  managers,  and  also 
to  facilitate  transfer  tickets.  But  that  need  not 
involve  the  city's  running  them.  In  Germany  each 
city's  roads  generally  belong  to  a  single  company,  but 
the  city  regulates  them  very  well  indeed. 

True,  the  single  management  prevents  the  public  hav- 
ing the  benefit  of  competition  in  fares,  but  the  pub- 
lic could  not  very  well  have  that,  anyhow,  unless  more 
than  one  road  runs  through  a  street,  tho  of  course  there 
is  room  for  some  competition  in  parallel  streets.  Low 

391  (nj.  Rates  of  fares  can  be  secured,  not  only  by  govern- 
^"'■^-  ment  regulation,  but  also  by  the  tendency 

of  a  broad-minded  management  like  that  of  the  Metro- 
politan Traction  Company  in  New  York  in  its  earlier 
years,  to  see  its  own  advantage  in  inviting  large  business. 
That  management,  however,  has  fallen  off  terribly  since 
it  was  a  new  broom.  Moreover,  low  fares  are  often 
secured  by  the  general  influence  of  those  vast  indis- 
tinguishable agencies  which  go  to  make  up  habit  and 
popular  opinion.  The  fares  in  Columbus  are  seven  for 
25  cents,  and  in  Rockford  twenty-five  general  tickets,  or 
fifty  school  tickets,  for  $t,  and  on  one  line  in  Cleveland, 
three  cents. 

In  Glasgow  and  probably  some  other  places,  they 
have  "zone"  fares,  starting  very  low  for  a  mile  from 


430  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  391  n 

the  centre,  and  then  increasing  mile  by  mile,  until 
they  run  up  to  ten  cents.  The  result  is  that  the  work- 
men do  not  go  to  the  country,  but  remain  huddled  in 
the  zones  of  cheap  fares. 

391  (0).  Deteno-  Altho  I  have  tried  to  state  the  situation 
rating  'private        fairly,   the   reader   in   favor  of   municipal 

service  may  com-        ,        ■'  ^.  ■  r      ,  ,  m  -h  111 

pel  municipal  Operation  ot  street  railways  will  probably 
experiment.  assume  that  I  have   made  the   best  case 

against  it  that  I  could.  And  now  (1907),  six  years 
since  I  made  most  of  that'  case,  I  am  bound  to  confess 
that  regarding  the  rapid-transit  roads  of  my  own  city 
of  New  York,  I  am  much  less  opposed  to  the  experi- 
ment of  municipal  operation.  In  stating  this,  I  shall 
probably  at  least  be  held  free  of  the  charge  of  saying 
it  without  a  realization  of  the  enormous  risks  of  the 
experiment.  When   I   made   my   case,   the   great 

monopolies  controlling  the  roads  were  newly  organized. 
They  were  more  than  suspected  of  holding  their  fran- 
chises in  consequence  of  great  political  corruption,  and 
they  were  on  their  good  behavior.  Moreover,  as  already 
said,  they  were  new  brooms.  Since  then  they  have 
had  time  to  grow  careless  and  indifferent,  Tammany 
is  again  in  power,  and  apparently  there  is  no  agency 
to  curb  their  shameless  and  (it  may  perhaps  be  hoped) 
short-sighted  avarice.  To  swell  their  profits,  they  have 
introduced  obstacles  in  their  system  of  transfers,  and, 
in  order  to  operate  only  crowded  cars,  have  steadily 
diminished  the  number  of  them  in  slack  hours,  and  of 
those  continuing  beyond  points — such  as  the  Grand  Cen- 
tral Depot  and  the  86th  Street  car-barns — where  many 
passengers  disembark,  thus  forcing  many  changes  and 
waits.  At  points  where  it  was  once  easy  to  find  a  car 
with  an  empty  seat,  nearly  every  passing  car  now  con- 
tains many  passengers  holding  on  to  the  straps;  the 
passenger  who  once  had  a  good  chance  for  a  seat,  is  now 
often  lucky  if  he  can  get  a  foothold  on  the  steps  or  the 
running-board ,  the  tracks  are  so  poorly  cared  for,  and 
left  unsanded,  that  on  going  up  hill  the  slipping  cars  are 
passed  by  people  on  foot ;  and  the  motormen  frequently 


§391/"]  Municipal  Public  Works.  431 

pass  would-be  passengers  on  the  few  occasions  when 
the  cars  are  not  full.  Early  in  1907,  the  companies 
claimed  that  many  men  were  laid  off  by  sickness.  A 
motorman  told  me  that  the  men  were  playing  sick 
to  get  a  chance  to  hunt  up  better  jobs,  and  concluded: 
"This  road  has  gone  onto  the  bum."  The  day  when 
this  is  written,  I  read  Dr.  Clark's  statement  that  in 
Australasia,  a  government  that  did  not  provide  decent 
railroad  accommodations  could  not  hold  office.  True, 
"they  manage  these  things  differently  in  France"  (and 
Australasia),  but  despite  the  influences  controlHng  elec- 
tions in  New  York  and  America  generally,  the  abuses 
of  many  of  our  city  railroads  have  reached  the  point 
where  any  change  of  management  stands  a  good  chance 
of  being  a  change  for  the  better;  and  even  if  one  should 
turn  out  for  the  worse,  it  would  at  least  bring  with  it 
much  valuable  education.  The  corruption  of  all  gov- 
ernment agents  by  the  railway  corporations  is  so  great, 
that  it  may  make  all  attempts  at  mere  government 
regulation  farcical,  and  perhaps  the  corruption  in  gov- 
ernment operation  would  be  no  greater. 
Z^upisomeother  ^^^.^.Y^t  before  we  have  tried  all  the 
experiments  de-  possibilities  of  regulation,  we  should  not 
sita  lefirs .  -^^   driven    to    the    extreme   of   municipal 

operation.  The  recommendation  already  made  of 
more  commissions  for  the  regulation  of  private  man- 
agement, might  be  tried  for  cities,  as  it  has  been  (but 
none  too  effectively)  tried  for  states;  and  the  powers 
and  duties  and  emoluments  of  the  commissions  that 
exist,  enlarged  so  as  to  enable  them  (if  they  will)  to 
hold  the  roads  up  to  the  greatest  practicable  efficiency. 
The  commissioners  would  probably  best  be  elected  by 
the  people.  The  state  railroad  commissions,  which 
have  not  been  elected  by  the  people,  have  generally 
been  mere  creatures  of  the  railroads,  and  often  appointed 
at  their  recommendation.  Yet  the  work  of  railroad 
commissions  is  easily  open  to  the  judgment  of  the 
people  and,  if  they  were  elective,  to  prompt  punishmicnt 
for  dereliction.  That  it  might  be  prompt,  the  term  of 
office  should  be   annual,   with  indefinite   eligibility  to 


43  2  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  391^ 

reelection.  If  such  commissions  always  fail,  the  only 
remaining  experiment  seems  to  be  government  operation. 
It  should  be  remembered  that  under  any  system  of 
mere  government  regulation,  the  responsibility  is 
divided  between  the  railway  corporation  and  the  govern- 
ment; while  under  government  operation,  the  respon- 
sibility would  be  upon  the  government  alone,  and  the 
issue  would  be  clean-cut.  That  it  would  be  as  effective 
and  permanent  a  remedy  as  the  out-and-out  advocates 
of  municipal  operation  generally  believe,  I  do  not  dare 
to  hope;  but  the  logic  of  events  is  converting  many 
opponents  into  advocating  it,  at  least  as  an  experi- 
ment. Meanwhile,  I  let  my  arguments  against  it 
stand  as  they  were  originally  written.  They  attempt 
to  show  the  dangers  of  the  experiment,  and  there  is 
some  slight  chance  that  they  may  fall  under  the  eyes 
of  a  person  here  and  there  who  may  have  some  little 
influence  in  guarding  against  those  dangers.  And 
behind  it  all,  I  have  a  misgiving  that  the  result  of  the 
experiment,  if  it  is  tried  before  the  arguments  find 
their  natural  way  to  oblivion,  may  after  all  only  con- 
firm their  validity. 

^         ,  We    come   now    to    Government's   rela- 

tions to  waterworks.  We  find  them  in 
many  of  the  ruins  of  early  civilizations,  especially  the 
Roman;  and  we  find  the  waterworks  themselves  in 
many  primitive  civilizations  of  our  own  day,  in  Asia 
and  Africa;  and  we  know  that  all  these  were  or  are 
government  works,  because  under  the  conditions  before 
modern  civilization,  cooperation  was  never  equal  to 
such  work. 

In  modern  Europe,  especially  in  the  more  paternal 
states,  municipal  ownership  is  the  rule.  In  America, 
waterworks  were  generally  begun  by  private  com- 
panies, but  the  tendency  has  been  more  and  more  for 
the  municipality  to  buy  out  the  companies  or  start  its 
own  works.  In  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, most  of  the  works  were  private;  at  its  close, 
probably  most  of  them  were  public.     The  size  of  places 


§  392  ^]  [Municipal  Ptiblic  Works.  433 

has  affected  the  question  materially:  the  little  works 
of  small  places  have  been  more  readily  constructed  bv 
private  c-apital.  The  works  in  cities  of  over  30,000 
are  generally  municipal.  A  peculiarity  about  water- 
392  (a).  Why  fit  "^orks  favors  this,  tho  the  waste  and  cor- 
formunicipaiiza-  ruption  in  building  government  water- 
works have  often  been  frightful ;  but  after 
they  are  once  built  they  require  little  management, 
and  so   afford   little   field  for  corniption. 

Yet  while  water-supplies  have  sometimes  been  well 
and  economically  managed  by  cities,  much — probably 
most  of  the  New  York  work,  has  consisted  of  enormous 
swindles. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  early  in  1900,  a  gigantic 
corporation  loomed  up  in  possession  of  all  the  water- 
rights  affecting  cities  of  the  lower  Hudson  valley,  in- 
cluding New  York  itself.  This  attained  the  proportions 
of  a  natural  monopoly,  and  public  opinion  was  strongly 
in  favor  of  the  municipality  forestalling  the  monopoly. 
The  scheme  was  laid  away  at  least  for  the  time. 
392  (b).  Health  Waterworks  ought  at  least  to  be  under 

questions.  ^^q  absolutc  control  of  a  Board  of  Health 

that  cannot  possibly  have  any  financial  interest  in  them : 
lately  Philadelphia  and  Passaic  were  full  of  typhoid 
from  their  water-supplies,  and  in  Philadelphia,  long  after 
the  remedy  was  plain,  it  was  impossible  to  apply  it, 
because  rivals  who  wanted  to  benefit  by  the  work,  got 
the  politicians  at  loggerheads  about  it. 

Many  cities  are  sorely  perplexed  over  the  purity  of 
their  water-supply.  Before  Pasteur  discovered  bacteria, 
it  was  quite  the  custom,  as  in  Chicago,  for  waterside 
cities  to  empty  their  sewage  into  the  water  to  whose 
position  they  owed  their  existence,  and  then,  unless  the 
water  was  salt,  pump  it  back  to  drink.  After  Pasteur 
taught  them  where  their  typhoids  came  from,  they  ran 
their  sewers,  where  practicable,  a  mile  or  two  farther 
out,  and  drank  a  higher  dilution.  They  are  now  learning 
that  this  will  not  do,  and  are  struggling  with  questions 
of  inland  supply,  deep  wells,  filtration  plants  and  sew-  , 
age   disposal.     Probably   the   best   and   cheapest   solu- 


434  ^^^^  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  392  & 

tion  of  the  question  is  one  that  poHtical  capacity  has 
not  yet  risen  to.  Laws  might  be  passed  (in  fact  some 
have  been  passed,  but  neglected,  in  New  York,  for  in- 
stance,) to  prohibit  the  poUution  of  fresh  water  (or  of 
salt  either,  where  bathing  can  be  harmed),  and  requiring 
the  rational  and  even  profitable  disposal  of  sewage  that 
the  soil  is  crying  for;  but  it  would  be  very  optimistic  to 
expect  the  enforcement  of  such  laws  before  people  be- 
come more  intelligent  and  law-abiding.  A  minor  diffi- 
culty would  be  that  sometimes  •  states  would  have  to 
concur  to  protect  the  confluents  of  a  watershed  lying  in 
both.  Such  laws  would  be  very  interesting  experiments, 
however,  and  perhaps  not  more  hopeless  than  most 
attempts  at  betterment  by  statute. 
^„^    ,  „    .  .    ,       Waste  is  a  frequent  evil.     Recently  in 

392(c).  Municipal  >■  -,     .-,     j.    .  .i-     -, 

management  LlVCrpOOl,     it     WaS     tOUnd     that    tWO    tllirdS 

naturally  wasteful.  ^^  ^^^  ^^^^^  running  iuto  the  city,  ran 
out  again  through  leaks  and  taps  needlessly  left  open. 
This  is  probably  about  the  case  in  the  vast  majority 
of  American  cities  to-day,  at  least  where  meters  are  not 
used.  Under  private  management,  the  company  would 
be  taking  care  of  its  own  supply:  now  the  politicians 
take  care,  and  characteristically  poor  care,  of  the  public's. 

Yet  while  private  companies  are  apt  to  do  better 
work  and  at  less  cost  for  actual  service,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  in  any  sort  of  service,  their  interests  may 
sometimes  conflict  with  the  interests  of  the  com- 
munity: they  may  render  less  service  than  the  com- 
munity needs,  as  was  shown  in  the  lack  of  salt-water 
mains  for  putting  out  fires  when  the  San  Francisco 
earthquake  broke  the  fresh-water  mains  from  the  in- 
terior. The  water-supply  was  the  affair  of  a  private 
company  which  had  obstructed  providing  a  supply 
for  fires  from  the  bay. 

Waterworks  are,  of  course,  generally  a  natural 
monopoly — competition  which  involves  more  than  one 
pipe-line  in  a  street,  is  not  practically  possible,  even 
in  large  places  because  of  the  large  size  of  the  mains; 
and  has  not  been  at  all  frequent.  Moreover,  when  it 
is,  it  is    a  frightful    nuisance  from  frequent  tearing  up 


§393'^]  Municipal  Public  Works.  435 

of  the  streets.  On  the  whole,  then,  municipal  water- 
works are  to  be  approved,  despite  municipal  cor- 
ruption, and  largely  for  the  same  reason  that  makes 
the  Post-Office  a  success:  everybody  watches  (387, 
389  /)  the  water-supply,  and  if  it  is  bad,  complains 
and  votes  against  the  government. 

Gasworks  are  cheaper  to  build  than 
■  '^  '"^"  waterworks,  and,  perhaps  for  that  reason, 
are  not  as  generally  municipalized:  so  competition  is 
more  frequent  in  gas  than  in  water:  two  or  three  com- 
panies frequently  having  gas-pipes  in  the  same  street — 
a  condition  facilitated  by  their  pipes  being  much  smaller 
than  water-mains. 

393  ra;.  Craves  '^^^'^  argument  for  municipal  ownership, 

municipalization     then,  is  not  as  strong  as  for  water,  espe- 

less  than  water.  ■    ■,■,  ■,  •  i         j_i      a.  •  , 

pecially  when  we  consider  that  gas  is  not 
used  by  everybody,  and  requires  more  management 
than  water  after  the  works  are  erected.  Cities  not 
making  their  own  gas  generally  charter  more  than 
one  company.  In  America,  of  course,  they  charter  as 
many  as  can  bribe  the  authorities,  tho  fortunately 
some  of  the  authorities  cannot  be  bribed.  In  Europe 
generally,  people  do  not  have  their  streets  torn  up  by 
more  than  one  company,  and  they  regulate  the  prices 
and  quality  of  the  gas  produced  by  that  one.  Ham- 
burg has  even  leased  her  own  works  to  a  private  cor- 
poration, but  she  keeps  her  hand  on  that  corporation. 
In  all  of  Germany  there  is  but  one  city  (Frankfort) 
chartering  more  than  one  company,  and  gas  is  higher 
there  than  anywhere  else  in  Germany. 

The  experience  regarding  municipal  ownership  of  gas- 
plants,  corresponds  with  the  conditions  just  given. 
Paternal  Germany  leads  off,  of  course,  with  a  m.ajority 
of  the  big  cities  owning  gas-plants.  The  smaller  cities, 
as  in  the  case  of  waterworks  with  us  (and  apparently 
the  world  over),  do  not  municipalize  gas  as  generally 
as  the  large  ones.  Great  Britain,  notwithstanding  it 
is,  among  European  nations,  at  the  other  extreme  from 
Germany   as   regards   paternalism,    nevertheless   comes 


436  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  393  CJ 

next  with  proportion  of  municipal  gasworks,  they  being 
about  one  in  three,  and  certainly  increasing. 

Glasgow  and  several  other  Scotch  cities,  likewise 
some  German  cities,  light  the  courts,  halls  and  stairs 
of  tenement-houses  with  gas,  and  Glasgow  makes  the 
owners  pay  for  most  of  it.  Some  cities,  tho,  spend 
as  much  for  it  as  in  lighting  streets — this  on  the  prin- 
ciple, of  course,  that  a  light  saves  a  policeman. 

Despite  England's  lack  of  paternalism,  she  comes 
next  to  Germany  in  municipalizing  gasworks.  Public 
opinion  demands  them  in  both  those  countries  more 
generally  than  in  the  rest  of  Europe,  there  being  a 
larger  proportion  of  people  given  to  reading,  who 
want  abundant  light,  and  who  can  afford  to  pay  for  it. 
393  rft;.  Cheapened  Apparently  municipal  ownership  has 
by  it  in  some         cheapened  gas  in  Great  Britain  and  Ger- 

places  in  Europe.  tj.      •  j-j.  i  •      i  i 

many,  it  is  often  supplied  as  low  as 
twenty-five  cents,  while  in  America  it  is  often  above 
a  dollar.  But  it  may  be  even  yet  too  early  to  be  sure 
that  it  is  not  cheapened  in  Great  Britain  and  Ger- 
many by  an  increase  of  taxation.  In  London  at  the 
time  of  writing,  the  gas  is  very  bad. 

Whether  we  would  better  adopt  municipalization  on 
the  chances,  we  can  tell  better  after  we  have  attained 
decent  government.  If  most  of  our  present  city  govern- 
ments were  giving  us  gas  for  fifty  cents,  they  would 
be  adding  more  than  another  fifty  cents  to  our  tax- 
bills,  by  corruption  in  the  works. 

We  have  not  had  much  experience  in  that  sort  of 
finance  in  America,  in  connection  with  gas,  because 
there  have  been  few  municipal  plants.  But  the  book- 
keeping for  gas  and  water  and  electricity  has  been 
393  (c).  American  Something  fearful  and  wonderful  in  the 
ZTil'reastgfy''  direction  of  trying  to  show  a  profit.  Pub- 
discouraging  lishcd    reports    are    very  unreliable.     The 

mayor  of  Philadelphia  lately  reported  a  year's  profit 
of  $160,000  on  gas,  while  a  Massachusetts  committee 
investigating  Philadelphia  experience  for  their  own 
guidance,  reported  a  loss  of  $1,000,000.*  The  gen- 
*  Daniels,  op  cit. 


§393^  Municipal  Ptiblic  Works.  437 

eral  American  experience  in  municipalities  operating 
gas-plants,  has  been  very  slight:  people  are  too  afraid 
of  the  political  rings,  and  the  rings  can  get  too  much 
out  of  the  existing  companies  for  letting  them  alone. 
A  few  towns  have  bought  their  local  gasworks  within 
the  last  score  of  3^ears;  but  on  the  whole,  people  do 
not  trust  universal-suffrage  government  far  enough  to 
want  to  disturb,  in  its  favor,  the  existing  state  of 
affairs.  Richmond  and  Philadelphia  have  long  had 
their  own  works,  but  tho  Philadelphia  has  owned  hers 
for  more  than  half  a  century,  she  has  lately  leased 
them  to  a  private  corporation,  municipal  management 
being  a  failure,  probably  owing  to  corruption.  The 
lease  fell  in  in  1905,  and  was  renewed  for  seventy- 
five  years,  by  a  corrupt  government  on  terms  that  the 
community  would  not  stand,  and  the  government  was 
ousted  in  consequence.  Toledo,  after  ten  years'  use 
of  a  municipal  natural-gas  plant,  leased  it  to  a  private 
company  at  a  rental  insufficient  to  pay  interest  on  a 
seventh  of  what  it  cost,  and  finally  sold  it  at  a  tenth 
of  its  cost.  Corruption  was  suspected  in  both  transac- 
tions. 

By  iqo5,  the  lighting  of  New  York  had  become  so 
monopolized  that,  at  the  time  of  this  writing,  many 
citizens  who  distrust  that  city's  capacity  to  manage  an 
industry,  think  a  municipal  ligliting  plant  would  be 
better  risked  than  a  continuation  of  existing  conditions. 
And  the  same  condition  is  rapidly  developing  regarding 
the  surface  railways. 

393  (dj.  Peculiar  There  seems  no  doubt  that  the  Rich- 
case /«  Richmond,  niond,  Virginia,  public  gas-plant  had  more 
than  paid  for  itself  over  twenty  years  ago,  has  paid 
into  the  city  treasury  over  $300,000,  has  reduced  the 
price  of  gas  from  $1.50  to  $1.00,  and  has  furnished 
free  gas  for  streets  and  public  buildings,  worth  $500,000 
more.*  All  of  which  proves  much  municipal  political 
capacity  in  Richmond,  but  unfortunately  does  not  prove 
it  anywhere  else. 

*  Zueblin,  op.  cit. 


438  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§393^ 

Since  the  foregoing  paragraph  was  written,  the  Rich- 
mond bookkeeping  has  been  proved  fallacious,  the 
works  have  been  proved  to  have  been  run  at  a  loss, 
and  to  need  renovation.  But  I  let  the  paragraph  stand 
as  one  more  illustration  of  the  uncertainty  of  evidence 
in  these  matters. 

393  (e).  other  In  Cleveland  the  gas  company  pays  into 

Amencan  cities,  ^-j^g  ^ity  treasury  6i  per  cent.— Professor 
Zueblin  does  not  say  whether  of  receipts  or  profits — ■ 
probably  not  thinking  it  any  more  worth  looking  up 
than  I  do.  The  people  have  just  voted  against 
municipal  electricity. 

Until  this  year,  1907,  Hamilton,  Ohio,  was  very 
proud  of  her  municipally  operated  gas  and  electric 
plants.  The  state  auditor  now  reports  that  from 
Jan.  I,  '03,  to  Jan.  i,  '06,  $35,000  dead  claims  had 
accumulated,  and  a  debt  of  $13,431;  that  the  adminis- 
tration was 

"marked  with  evidence  of  mismanagement,  extravagance  and 
unbusinesslike  methods  .  .  .  the  employment  of  inexperienced 
men  [with  pulls?]  to  superintend  important  work  where  both 
mechanical  and  electrical  skill  were  necessary  .  .  .  cost  of 
production  at  times  exceeded  the  schedule  rates  charged  for 
the  service.   ..." 

Stubs  and  original  memoranda  of  various  kinds  were 
missing,  there  was  a  shortage  in  the  secretary's  accounts, 
and  the  surety  bonds  of  many  officials  had  not  been 
renewed  in  years.     In  the  words  of  the  report: 

"Officials,  ex-officials,  prominent  citizens  and  others  were 
enjoying  free  service;  ■while  these  accounts  were  duly  charged 
on  the  books,  apparently  no  effort  had  been  made  toward 
their  collection  or  adjustment.  Several  individual  accounts 
ranged  from  one  hundred  to  eleven  hundred  dollars." 

It  need  hardly  be  reiterated  that  the  truth  as  to  the 
success  of  gas  municipalization  so  far,  is  hard  to  get  at. 
In  Chicago,  for  instance,  chartered  accountants  claim 
that  the  municipal  gas-plant  has  been  running  at  a  loss, 
while  the  mayor  claims  that  it  has  been  running  at  a 
profit. 


§  393  /]  Municipal  Public  Works.  439 

Dr.  Bemis  (quoted  b}^  Professor  Zueblin)  says  that  all 
the  municipal  gas-plants  are  succeeding.  It  is  edifying 
to  have  such  definite  information  regarding  the  Phila- 
delphia one  (which  Professor  Zueblin,  after  quoting 
'Dr.  Bemis,  says  "was  the  football  of  politics  .  .  . 
over  half  a  century"),  not  to  speak  of  those  of  Rich- 
mond, Toledo  and  Hamilton — so  edifying  as  to  give 
some  impression  of  the  quality  of  the  information 
regarding  the  others.  Other  authorities  say  that  the 
desire  of  the  authorities  to  make  a  good  showing, 
combined  with  bad  systems  of  bookkeeping,  make  it 
impossible  to  tell  whether  they  are  succeeding  or  not. 

In  short,  there  had  been  no  magic  in  municipal 
operation  to  make  it  different  from  the  operation 
previously  quite  general  in  American  cities. 

Professor  Zueblin  states  that  "in  Great  Britain  .  .  . 
over  100,000,000,000  cubic  feet  are  consumed  by  half 
the  number  of  people  that  consume  50,000,000,000  in 
this  country".  This  he  attributes  to  municipal  opera- 
tion. Whether  it  is  at  the  expense  of  the  taxpayers 
he  does  not  say,  perhaps  because  nobody  knows  yet, 
tho  there  is  a  growing  suspicion  that  it  is, — and  Pro- 
fessor Zueblin  plainly  thinks  that  it  ought  to  be! 
393  rf;.  General  Cities  can  do  something  for  the  gas- 
considerations.  supply  without  owuing  it :  they  can  keep 
it  up  to  standard  and  regulate  prices— the  German  cities 
and  many  others  do  that  without  needing  competition 
(393  a).  Some  of  the  German  cities  have  their  gas  tested 
every  day,  but  that  is  probably  more  than  many  of  our 
cities  could  do  with  any  confidence  in  the  test. 

Besides  the  argument  (which  may  not  exist)  of  cheap- 
ness of  gas  and  water,  if  people  think  it  is  cheap,  or  get 
their  supply  at  a  fixed  price,  as  is  generally  often  the 
case  with  municipalized  water,  they  will  use  more,  and 
that  is  good  for  them.  Moreover,  for  light,  a  munici- 
pality is  sure  of  at  least  one  very  valuable  customer — 
namely  itself.  Some  Continental  cities  use  nearly 
quarter  of  what  is  made,  but  that  looks  as  if  the  people 
did  not  use  as  much  privately  as  the  English,  or  even 
our  people,  do. 


440  The  Protection  of  Rights.  [§  303^ 

393  (g)  Eiec-  As   to   electricity,  no  existing  state  of 

tricity.  affairs  had  to  be  disturbed  to  municipa- 

lize it :  so  our  people  have  municipalized  it  much  more 
generally  than  gas.     Yet  the  results  are  doubtful. 

Duluth  claims  to  have  saved  its  people  in  seven 
years  $631,000  in  reductions  of  rates  on  water  and  gas, 
and  to  have  accumulated  and  invested  in  extending 
the  systems,  $121,000. 

Detroit  claims  that  in  the  ten  years  ending  with 
June,  1895,  she  lit  her  streets  at  $1  less  per  arc  light 
per  year  than  Buffalo,  and  paid  out  of  profits  for  a 
million-dollar  plant. 

Logansport,  Indiana,  claims  to  have  provided  the 
people  with  good  electric  hght  at  a  moderate  price 
since  1894,  to  have  had  all  city  lighting  in  streets  and 
public  buildings  free,  and  to  have  paid  out  of  proceeds 
$100,000  for  increase  of  plant. 

Jacksonville,  Fla.,  claims  to  have,  during  about 
eleven  years  preceding  1906,  reduced  prices  of  elec- 
tricity to  citizens,  75  per  cent.,  and  paid  out  of  profits 
for  $365,000  worth  of  plant,  plus  interest  on  such  bonds 
as  were  issued  at  the  start. 

On  the  other  hand,  after  trying  the  municipal  electric 
street-lighting  plant  for  eighteen  years,  the  people  of 
Easton,  Pa.,  are  demanding  that  the  city  councils 
abandon  it  and  procure  lighting  from  the  private  cor- 
poration. Mayor  March,  who  advocates  municipal 
ownership  when  it  can  give  efficient  service,  has  declared 
that  the  condition  of  the  streets  of  the  city  through 
defective  lighting  is  dangerous  from  a  police  point  of 
view  and  unbearable  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
citizen,  and  favors  private  service. 

Offers  have  been  made  by  private  corporations  at 
$15  a  year  less  per  lamp  than  it  now  costs  the  city  for 
the  service  which  is  causing  constant  complaint.  It  is 
estimated  that  the  city  has  thrown  away  for  several  years 
from  $4,000  to  $5,000  a  year  in  maintaining  the  plant. 

Mayor  March  says:  "If  we  intend  to  continue  light- 
ing the  city  by  our  own  plant,  we  must  run  the  plant 
as  a  private  corporation  would  run  it,  not  only  with 


§  393^]  Alunicipal  Public  Works.  441 

economy,  but  also  by  constantly  repairing  and  renewing 
the  machinery  to  keep  up  its  efficiency.  This  has  not 
been  done.  I  feel  that  public  opinion  will  insist  upon 
the  streets  being  lighted  by  a  private  company  because 
the  public,  as  well  as  I,  believe  it  can  be  done  for  far 
less  expense  than  it  is  being  done  by  the  city." 

Select  Councilman  David  W.  Nevin  says:  "In  my 
opinion  the  operation  of  municipal  plants  amounts 
merel}^  to  the  creation  of  a  number  of  places  to  be 
filled  by  local  poHticians.  These  men  get  salaries,  but 
have  no  interest  in  the  plants  as  long  as  they  continue 
their  'pulls'  and  hold  their  jobs." 

That  same  Mayor  Head  of  Nashville  whose  experi- 
ence with  the  city  railroads  was  given,  proved  again 
in  relation  to  light  what  municipal  regulation  without 
even  ownership,  may  accomplish.  By  judicious  work 
in  the  legislature  he  got  the  gas  company  to  reduce 
its  price  from  $1.50  per  thousand  feet  to  $1,  and  its 
stock  has  risen  from  ninety  cents  to  a  dollar  and  a 
quarter. 

He  says  *  that  when  he  began  building  a  municipal 
electric  plant,  the  existing  company  reduced  its  rates 
from  eighteen  cents  to  twelve-,  and  made  many  con- 
tracts at  six.  He  ultimately  took  over  the  street- 
lighting  from  them,  and  did  it  the  first  year  twice  as 
freely  as  they  had  the  preceding  year,  at  a  cost  of 
$33,500,  as  against  their  charge  of  $49,270. 

In  I  go  I  the  aldermen  of  Worcester,  Mass.,  found  that 
in  all  the  cities  from  which  they  could  get  reliable  data, 
the  cost  of  electricity  from  municipal  plants  averaged 
3.4  cents  per  lamp-hour,  while  Worcester  was  paying  a 
private  corporation  2.8. 

In  1906,  Alexandria,  Va.,  sold  for  $3000  an  electric 
plant  which  had  cost  $17,000,  four  Indiana  cities  were 
looking  for  customers  for  theirs,  and  Cleveland  had 
voted  against  Mayor  Tom  Johnson's  recommendation 
to  make  one.  On  the  other  hand,  many  Araerican  cities 
were    claiming   success    for   municipal    electric-lighting 

*  Proceedings  of  National  Municipal  League,  1906. 


442  The  Protection  oj  Rights.  [§393^ 

plants,  whether  with  better  warrant  than  Richmond's 
long  claims  for  her  gas-plant,  time  will  show. 

Great  Britain  leads  even  Germany  in  municipal  electric 
lighting,  possibly  being  quicker  to  seize  novelties;  and 
Germany  has  more  electric  plants  run  by  private  cor- 
porations, than  gas-plants:  possibly  because  the  capital- 
ists are  quicker  than  the  government. 
393  (h).  Eiec-  But  not  everybody  uses  electricity :    so 

tncity  versus  gas.  f^j-^  ^ot  nearly  as  many  as  burn  gas.  The 
justification,  then,  for  municipalizing  it  is  not  nearly  so 
obvious.  But  it  is  incomparably  the  best  street  light, 
and  economizes  police  expenses,  and  prevents  crime: 
the  electric  light  has  rendered  many  a  street  safe  which 
great  police  care  failed  to.  Municipalizing  for  street 
purposes  would,  then,  perhaps  be  justifiable  as  a  police 
measure,  and  possibly  private  supply  may  as  well  go 
along  with  street  supply. 

-„„  ,.,  ,,  .  As  bearing  on  the  conveniences  thus  far 

393  (I).  Major  .  ,  .      ^      -  ,  .  ^. 

Darwin  on  utilities  considered,  and  one — housing  the  poor,  to 
already  treated.  ^^  considered  later  (431  ff.)-  a  table  in 
Major  Leonard  Dan\dn's  "Municipal  Trade"  (London, 
1903)  shows  that  from^March  31,  1893,  to  March  31, 
1902,  municipal  waterworks,  gasworks,  tramways,  mar- 
kets and  some  minor  undertakings  have  been  con- 
ducted at  apparent  profits,  while  electric  works,  bath- 
and  wash-houses,  burial-grounds,  working-class  dwellings, 
harbors,  piers,  docks  and  quays,  have  been  conducted  at 
apparent  losses.  But  he  does  not  consider  the  figures 
entirely  reliable,  and  his  general  attitude  is  one  which 
American  experience  confirms — that  the  tendency  of  the 
bookkeeping  is,  very  naturally,  to  throw  doubtful  points 
in  favor  of  profit. 

„„,  .,. ,   ,  There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  discussion 

394.  Telephone,        i    ■    i  .    .  °  ^.    .  ,        j.   i       i 

lately  over  municipalizing  the  telephone. 

Perhaps  we  can  sum  up  most  of  what  we  have  been 

learning  regarding  government  operation  in  connection 

with  that  subject.     After  paying  for  telephones  in  five 

buildings  in  four  cities,  I  find  it  apparently  the  hardest 


§  395]  Municipal  Public  Works.  443 

business  to  manage  decently,  of  which  I  have  knowl- 
edge. How,  then,  about  the  fitness  of  the  governments 
to  undertake  it.  It  is  doubtful  whether  its  real  usefulness 
is  wide  enough  to  strongly  justify  government  being 
burdened  with  it  ?  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  essen- 
tially a  monopoly:  for  competition  seems  next  to  im- 
possible, because  every  user  wants  to  reach  every  other 
user,  and  the  service  would  be  almost  useless  if  split 
up  among  several  companies.  Therefore  if  government 
ever  becomes  fit  to  control  this  most  difficult  of  con- 
veniences, the  telephone  might  properly  be  among  the 
first  undertaken. 

Now  as  long  as  there  is  private  competi- 
395.  Tearing  up  tion  in  water,  gas  and  electric  conduits 
fir®?i5es,5r"esfetc.  of  all  kinds,  it  is  a  great  nuisance  to 
doubly  or  trebly  tear  up  the  streets  to 
enable  several  companies  to  construct  and  repair  their 
conduits,  and  it  not  only  is  ugly  and  obstructive  to 
travel,  but  it  spreads  malaria.  It  is  too  late  to  effect 
all  the  economies  that  were  once  possible,  by  combining 
into  a  trust  all  the  companies  dealing  in  any  one  of  the 
commodities,  as  now  is  frequently  done  with  new  ones, 
because  the  competing  companies  have  already  torn 
many  towns  to  pieces,  and  wasted  a  great  deal  of  money 
in  dupHcating  each  other's  works.  But  any  trust  that 
may  be  made,  need  not  continue  using  all  the  _  pipes, 
and  tearing  up  to  keep  them  in  repair;  but  if  it  does 
not  use  ah,  it  would  have  to  tear  up  for  new  connections 
to  replace  the  discarded  ones;  and  so  far  as  it  does 
not  use  all,  there  would  have  been  just  that  much 
waste. 

For  gas  and  water  both  (not  to  speak  of  sewerage, 
electricity  and  pneumatic  tubes)  there  is  everywhere  a 
most  painful  need  for  a  central  combination  to  put 
all  the  conduits  in  each  street  into  one  good  tunnel, 
abundantly  large  and  convenient,  where  they  could  be 
placed  as  needed,  and  taken  out  and  repaired  without 
the  inconvenience,  waste  and  sickness  always  due  to 
disturbing  the  streets.    Some  of  the  London  underground 


444  The  Promotion  of  Convenieitce.  [§395 

railway  tunnels  carry  pipes  and  are,  on  the  whole,  success- 
ful in  it.  Paris  has  a  pipe  system  in  some  of  its  sewers. 
It  is  not  as  complete  as  it  might  be,  but  very  admirable 
as  far  as  it  goes.  Paris  puts-  the  gas-pipes  and  electric 
wires  under  the  sidewalks  instead  of  the  roadway. 
Milan  in  its  splendid  new  Via  Dante  has  galleries  under 
the  sidewalks  and  right'  by  the  houses,  for  everything 
except  the  sewerage:  that  goes  under  the  roadway 
as  usual.  New  York  has  lately  built  a  few  "pipe 
galleries"  in  connection  with  the -subway  railroads,  but 
of  course  not  as  many  as  there  ought  to  have  been,  and 
the  specifications  for  the  new  subways  require  them 
throughout. 

As  the  concert  of  action  necessary  for  pipe  galleries 
cannot  be  had  froin  half  a  dozen  independent  companies 
squabbling  over  each  of  the  conveniences,  pipe-gallery 
or  tunnel  companies  may  be  chartered,  but  by  the  time 
a  city  needs  them,  the  then  existing  gas  and  water  com- 
panies would  fight  against  moving  their  own  pipes: 
so  after  all,  the  only  way  to  get  the  best  results  would 
seem  to  be  for  the  city  to  own  all  the  interests  (it  need 
not  operate  any)  or  at  least  the  tunnels  or  galleries,  and 
compel  their  use.  For  the  government  to  take  the 
whole  lot  by  eminent  domain,  and  fix  them  up  right, 
once  for  all,  would  certainly  be  the  best  solution — for 
any  government  fit  to  do  it  without  the  frightful  waste 
and  corruption  of  most  government  work  in  American 
cities.  Tunnels  would  probably  cost  American  tax- 
payers many  times  what  they  ought  to,  but  they  might 
be  worth  having  at  the  price,  or  for  reasons  of  health, 
at  almost  any  price. 

Most  American  cities  let  companies  use  their  streets 
for  pipes  and  wires  without  paying  for  the  privilege; 
most  European  cities  get  large  revenues  from  them: 
so  probably,  without  municipalizing  so  far  as  to  have 
the  cities  do'  the  work  of  the  companies,  it  might  be 
well  to  make  municipal  tunnels,  and  charge  the  com- 
panies for  the  use  of  them. 

Kansas  City  gets  ten  cents  per  foot  per  year  for  the 
privilege  of  laying  down  conduits  for  wires. 


§397]  Municipal  Public  Works.  445 

3.96.  Advertising  O^e  very  novel  and  useful  source  of 
s'g"S'  revenue,  in  Berlin,  comes  from  regulating 

advertising  signs.  The  city  keeps  them  in  good  taste, 
and  gets  seventy  thousand  dollars  a  year  for  the  privileges 
of  them.  Of  course  such  a  proceeding  is  still  far  beyond 
our  political  capacity. 

Professor  Daniels  ("Public  Finance", 
ummary.  Edition  of  1 899,  pp.  277-9)  admirably 
summarizes  conclusions  on  the  topics  of  this  chapter 
as  below.  Up  to  1907  the  aspects  of  the  case  are  not 
materially  changed,  tho  farther  developed,  as  we  shall 
see  in  the  next  chapter. 

"A  careful  sifting  of  the  evidence  presented  on  both  sides 
seems  to  establish  the  following  conclusions  as  highly  probable: 
(i)  The  price  charged  by  private  companies  for  the  supply  of 
water  exceeds  by  twenty-five  to  forty-three  per  cent,  the 
price  charged  by  municipal  waterworks;  (2)  the  cost  of  the 
water-supply  by  municipalities  probably  exceeds  the  cost 
incurred  by  private  companies,  tho  how  far  the  increased  cost 
augments  general  taxes  it  is  difficult  to  say;  (3)  while  the  price 
of  gas  in  England  under  both  systems  is  markedly  less  than  the 
price  of  gas  under  either  system  in  the  United  States,  the  rate 
of  reduction  in  gas  prices  in  the  United  States  since  1S70  seems 
to  have  been  more  rapid  than  in  England;  (4)  the  cost  of  pro- 
ducing gas  has  probably  been  less  under  private  than  under 
public  management.  ...  It  is  practically  certain  that  muni- 
cipalities have  paid  more  than  private  companies  for  labor  both 
in  England  and  in  the  United  States.  'This  failing',  says  Pro- 
fessor Bcniis  naively,  'if  it  be  a  failing,  is  quite  common  in 
public  works.  Many  consider  it  an  advantage  for  public  works 
thus  to  set  the  example  of  good  wages.'  Our  complacency  on 
this  score  might  perhaps  be  just  if  the  example  set  by  our 
public  works  were  uniformly  an  example  of  good  wages  for 
good  work.  When,  as  is  so  common,  the  practice  of  our  public 
works  amounts  to  high  pay  for  the  inefficient  service  of  party 
hacks,  the  'advantage'  of  such  a  policy  is  more  than  dubious. 
(5)  The  price  charged  for  gas  by  public  companies  in  England 
appears  to  be  less  by  seven  or  eight  per  cent,  than  the  charge 
made  by  private  companies,  but  no  such  general  assertion  can 
be  made  with  respect  to  the  United  States;  (6)  public  electric- 
light  plants  in  this  country  cannot  be  said  generally  to  furnish 
electricity  at  a  lower  cost  or  price  than  private  companies. 
The  evidence  rather  tends  to  show  that  the  advantage  lies  with 
private  companies,  especially  as  long  as  electrical  apparatus  is 


446  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§397 

evidently  in  the  transitional  stage.  (7)  Local  transportation 
has  been  undertaken  by  several  British  municipalities  with 
varying  success.  In  this  country  it  is  as  yet  untried.  When 
all  circumstances  are  taken  into  consideration  it  would  appear 
that  our  transportation  service  is  not  only  immeasurably  more 
efficient  than  the  British  tramway  service,  but  that  the  charges 
for  distance  traversed  are  really  less  in  the  United  States 
than  upon  the  most  successful  of  municipal  lines  in  Great 
Britain." 


CHAPTER   XXX. 

LATEST    ASPECTS    OF    GOVERNMENT    OPERATION. 

Most  of  the  preceding  treatment  of  the  problems  of 
municipalization  was  written  in  1900,  tho  I  have  tried 
to  bring  its  details  up  to  date.  As  to  general  conclu- 
sions, those  of  Professor  Daniels  were  stated  in  1899. 
These  words  are  written  late  in  1906.  On  searching 
for  evidence  of  what  has  happened  during  the  inter- 
vening time,  I  have  been  surprised  to  find  how  scant 
and  conflictihg  it  is.  Two  things  are  plain — the  efflores- 
cence of  municipalization  up  to  1890  has  met  with  a 
serious  blight;  and  the  testimony  on  the  subject  is 
colored  by  that  difference  between  men 
AnftoSiiaS'*'  ^"''  which  bears  the  names  of  Plato  and  Aris- 
totle, but  which  began  long  before  them. 
The  idealists  find  municipalization  triumphant,  the  men 
of  facts  find  no  sufficient  evidence  that  it  is. 

In  Great  Britain,  the  advocates  of  municipal  operation 
say  that  the  statistics  abundantly  prove  its  success. 
The  opponents  say  that  they  do  not.  Professor  Daniels 
doubts  whether  "any  real  financial  profit  whatever  has 
399.  Major  Darwin  emerged".  Major  Darwin*  thinks  that 
to  1903.  "the  net  result  to  the  nation  wih  te  neither 

a  considerable  financial  loss  nor  a  considerable  financial 
gain".  The  report  of  the  Parliamentary  Committee 
already  alluded  to  shows  little  confidence  in  the  statistics 
either  way,  saying:    "The  auditors  are  not  accountants, 

*  Op.  cit.     The  most  detailed  work  yet  given  to  the  subject. 

447 


448  '    The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  399 

and  are  not,  in  the  opinion  of  the  committee,  properly 
quahfied  to  discharge  the  duties  which  should  devolve 
upon  them."  Major  Darwin  supports  most  of  the  con- 
victions already  set  forth. 

"In  the  United  States  .  .  .  the  balance  of  advantages  and 
disadvantages  tells  heavily  against  Municipal  Trade.  ...  In 
England,  Municipal  Trade  is  more  likely  than  private  enter- 
prise to  introduce  corruption.  ...  As  regards  gasworks,  the 
results  have  been  shown  to  be  faulty.  .  .  .  No  material  gain 
or  loss  has  directly  resulted  from  Municipal  Trade,  altho  taxa- 
tion is  now  being  increased  thereby.  .  .  .  The  arguments  are 
telling  strongly  against  Municipal  House-building.  .  .  .  Local 
authorities  are  advancing  too  rapidly  in  the  paths  of  Municipal 
Trade." 

He  agrees  with  Lord  Avebury's  opinion  that  so  far 

"There  can  indeed  be  little  doubt  that  there  are  fewer  work- 
men's dwellings  now  than  there  would  have  been  if  the  muni- 
cipalities had  not  built  any.  ...  As  regards  house  operations, 
a  particularly  strong  case  can  be  made  against  this  work  being 
largely  entrusted  to  municipal  employees";  that  it  would  "be 
most  unwise  to  base  our  policy  for  the  future  on  the  hope  of 
any  financial  benefits  to  either  consumers  or  ratepayers  from 
Municipal  Trade  "  ;  that  "  as  regards  ordinary  competitive  trades, 
the  case  for  municipal  trade  in  fact  breaks  down  utterly"; 
that  "the  logical  thing  to  do  would  be  to  establish  a  separate 
elected  body  for  the  management  of  such  enterprises,  the 
number  of  votes  to  be  given  by  each  voter  being  solely  based 
on  the  amount  of  the  rates  paid  by  him"  (an  approach  to  the 
recommendations  of  the  Tilden  Commission  in  New  York) ,  and 
that  "Local  Authorities  in  England  .  .  .  have  gone  too  far  in 
certain  directions  in  their  acceptance  of  socialist  ideas. "  He 
quotes  John  Stuart  Mill  to  the  effect  that  "the  reasons  in  favor 
of  leaving  to  voluntary  associations  all  such  things  as  they  are 
competent  to  perform,  would  exist  in  equal  strength  if  it  were 
certain  that  the  work  itself  would  be  as  well  or  better  done  by 
public  officers",  the  reasons  being  "the  mischief  of  overloading 
the  chief 'functionaries  of  government  with  demands  on  their 
attention,  and  diverting  them  from  duties  which  they  alone 
can  discharge,  to  objects  which  can  be  sufticicntly  Avell  attained 
without  them;  the  danger  of  unnecessarily  swelling  the  direct 
power  and  direct  influence  of  government,  .  .  .  and  the  inex- 
pediency of  concentrating  in  a  dominant  bureaucracy  all  the 
skill  and  experience  in  the  management  of  large  interests,  and 
all  the  power  of  organized  action  existing  in  the  community ;  a 
practice  which  keeps  the  citizen  in  a  relation  to  the  government 
like  that  of  children  to  their  guardians,  and  is  a  main  catise 


§  4oo]      Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.  449 

of  the  inferior  capacity  for  political  life  which  has  hitherto 
characterized  the   over-governed   countries   of  the  Continent." 

Ann  M    ;  v.i  The  vcrv  latest  contributor  of  British 

400.  IVIunicipal  .  •T-.r  tt  t->-i>t  j, 

operation,  retarding  experience  IS  Proiessor  Hugo  R.  Meyer.* 
deve opment.  j_j-g    i^i-^ggjg    jg    ^]-^a,t    municipal    operation 

retards  and  limits  the  supplying  of  facilities,  in  fact 
often  prevents  them.  This  he  illustrates  by  the  genera] 
facts  that  Great  Britain,  where  that  system  epcists  much 
more  widely  than  with  us,  has  proportionally  about 
one-quarter  the  street-railway  facilities,  one-third  the 
electric-lighting  facilities,  and  less  than  one-quarter  the 
telephone  facilities  that  are  enjoyed  in  the  United  States, 
where  these  matters  have  been  left  to  private  initiative. 
Glasgow,  the  banner  city  of  municipal  railways,  has, 
in  proportion  to  population,  but  one-third  the  facilities 
of  Boston,  and,  distance  being  considered  (only  relatively, 
Glasgow  has  no  distance,  the  roads  not  going  far  from 
the  center),  the  fares  are,  in  labor  cost,  much  higher 
than  those  of  Boston.  In  consequence  of  the  backward- 
ness of  these  industries.  Professor  Meyer  claims,  120,000 
British  people  have  missed  opportunities  of  employment, 
and  been  forced  to  emigration  or  unemployment;  and 
that  so  far  as  electric  machinery  is  concerned,  England 
has  lost  her  old  place  as  one  of  the  world's  chief  sources 
of  supply  for  mechanical  apparatus. 

Professor  Meyer  seems  to  prove  that  the  facts  (of 
which  there  can  be  no  question)  result  from  the  cause 
to  which  he  attributes  them.  The  most  obvious  and 
incontrovertible  of  his  arguments  is  that  a  city  ov/ning 
a  plant  for  any  purpose,  must  attack  itself  to  introduce  a 
new  one  or  a  substitute;  while,  if  a  plant  is  owned  by  a 
private  company,  a  competing  company  feels  no  tender- 
ness for  it.  Private  companies  not  only  find  in  compe- 
tition their  very  reason  for  existence,  but  are  notoriously 
readier  than  government  bodies  to  adopt  improvements: 
the  Boston  Elevated  Railway  Company,  according  to 

*  "Municipal  Ownership  in  Great  Britain"  (1906),  a  work  to 
which  I  am  greatly  indebted. 


450  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  400 

Professor  Meyer,  ' '  scrapped ' '  four  equipments  of  motors 
in  twelve  years.  The  effect  of  this  consideration  in 
making  the  British  cities  owning  gas-plants,  oppose  the 
introduction  of  electricity,  is  shown  in  the  figures 
already  given.  Another  obvious  consideration  is  of 
course  the  comparative  slowness  of  all  government 
operations,  as  compared  with  those  impelled  by  self- 
interest.  Mr.  Farrar,  for  nearly  twenty  years  Secre- 
tary of  the  Board  of  Trade  (quoted  by  Professor  Meyer), 
said  in  1883: 

"All  experience  shows  that  whilst  capital  will  always  .  .  . 
support  a  new  invention,  if  there  is  prospect  of  success,  there 
is  no  such  active  motive  power  on  the  part  of  governing  bodies; 
they  take  up  a  thing  when  it  is  done,  but  they  are  not  persons 
generally  willing,  nor  perhaps  are  they  the  best  persons,  to  take 
up  a  new  invention." 

The  claim  that  leaving  government  to 
themanger^^'"  Supply  facilities,  oftcn  means  not  supply- 
ing them  at  all,  is  proved  by  many  in- 
stances where  municipalities  have  obtained  from 
Parliament  (which  in  such  matters  virtuall}-  performs 
the  functions  of  our  state  governments)  powers  to  do  all 
sorts  of  things,  in  order  to  keep  private  companies  from 
doing  them,  and  have  not  done  them  at  all.  When  a 
municipality  has  parliamentary  sanction  to  undertake  a 
matter  of  the  kind,  no  other  agency  can  do  it  within  the 
limits.  In  October  '99  over  a  hundred  local  govern- 
ments which  had  obtained  such  sanctions  were  not  using 
them,  and  of  course  not  permitting  anybody  else  to  do 
the  service. 

Professor  Meyer  also  cites  several  instances  of  the 
Association  of  Municipal  Corporations  and  the  Associa- 
tion of  Urban  District  Councils,  blocking  schemes  for 
supplying  large  territory  with  light  and  power  at  the  low 
rates  possible  only  to  large  operations,  because  of  fear 
that  the  companies  would  underbid  the  municipalities. 
Yet  in  several  cases  the  districts  thus  deprived  of  cheap 
supply,  contained  municipalities  which  had  no  supply 
at  all.     A  striking  instance  (I  forget  whether  I  found  it 


§  400  c]    Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.         451 

400  (b).  English  in  Meyer)  is  the  killing  by  the  municipali- 
municipaiization  tics  of  a  private  sclieme  to  light  some  thir- 
teen hundred  square  miles  very  cheaply 
from  the  coal-fields,  v/hile  of  the  whole  thirteen  hundred 
square  miles,  under  four  square  miles  were  lighted  by 
the  municipalities  themselves.  This  recalls  what  we 
have  seen  of  townships  obstructing  American  through 
roads  (384  c).  These  associations  were  even  including 
in  the  tax-bills,  the  expenses  of  agitating  to  deprive  the 
taxpayers  of  the  benefit  of  competition.  The  attitude  of 
the  municipal  governments  regarding  all  private  initi- 
ative, is  like  the  jealous  opposition  of  the  ignorant  classes 
to  "capital"  and  "corporations".  For  example,  in 
1905,  Bethnal  Green,  a  London  borough  of  130,000 
inhabitants,  had  no  light.  Its  representative  in  Par- 
liament did  not  want  it  "at  the  mercy  of  a  dividend- 
earning  company",  as  it  was  "notorious  that  the 
United  States"  municipalities  were.  In  the  House 
400 cc;.  stmn-  °^  Commons  in  1900,  Mr.  Macdona  said: 
giing  private  "  There  is  a  feeling  in  the  country  that  the 
enterprise.  municipalities    are   organizing   themselves 

into  a  gigantic  monopoly  with  a  view  to  strangling  pri- 
vate enterprise."  Aldermen  Bussey  of  Poplar  (169,000 
inhabitants)  said  before  a  committee  of  the  House  of 
Lords  in  1905,  that  his  town  "would  not  take  current 
from  a  company  at  a  lower  rate  than  the  town  could 
supply  it",  tho  the  company  offered  it  at  a  third  less. 
In  this  debate,  so  eminent  a  man  as  John  Burns  con- 
tributed the  specimen  of  Labor  logic  that  cheapening 
the  current  would  increase  the  number  of  the  unem- 
ploved. 

When  existing  companies  go  to  Parliament  for  re- 
newed charters,  or  for  increased  facilities  of  any  kind, 
the  municipalities  often  oppose  power  to  increase  capi- 
tal to  extend  tracks  or  conduits,  and  thus  force  the 
companies  to  sell  out  to  them  cheap;  and  then  for 
the  private  policy  of  expansion,  comes  the  municipal 
policy  of  sitting  still.  Professor  Meyer  quotes  Mr. 
Leigh,  counsel  to  the  Speaker  and  chairman  of  Com- 
mittees of  the  House  of  Commons,  as  saying  in  1900: 


452  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  400 c 

"Municipalities  never  invented  or  initiated  anything,  either 
with  regard  to  tramways  or  gas  or  electric  lighting,  and  yet 
when  a  company  has  become  flourishing,  they  have  been  rather 
forced  in  a  comer  to  sell  their  undertaking.  .  .  .  [The  munici- 
palities] have  not  come  in  for  the  purpose  of  helping  .  .  ..  when 
a  gas  undertaking  has  been  badly  carried  on,  but  they  have 
pounced  upon  gas  companies  when  they  were  paying  their  full 
dividend." 

It  is  not  surprising,  then,  that  Professor  Meyer, 
has  to  admit  that  "in  the  year  1898-99  ah  but  48  of 
the  222  municipal  gas-plants  of  the  United  Kingdom 
paid  the  interest  and  sinking-fund  payments  properly 
charged  against  them".  He   repeats  the  well-known 

fact  that  the  alleged  low  rates  of  the  British  city  rail- 
ways are  only  for  narrow  centers  and  narrow  zones 
around  them,  and  calls  attention  to  the  consideration 
that  municipalities,  with  the  universally  recognized 
inertness  of  such  bodies,  are  very  slow  to  extend  their 
lines,  and  thus  leave  a  frightful  degree  of  overcrowding 
in  cities  of  a  grade  that,  with  us,  are  not  overcrowded 
appreciably. 

400  (d)-  Fran-  The  leading  obstruction  to  private  initia- 

chises  too  short,  -(-^yg  j-^g^g  t)een  a  too  eager  demand  for 
municipal  ownership.  The  law  of  1882  denied  electric- 
light  companies  sure  possession  of  their  plants  for  more 
than  sixteen  years,  at  the  end  of  which  time  the  muni- 
cipalities had  the  privilege  of  buying.  This  of  course 
made  enterprisers  very  slow  to  risk  furnishing  the 
facilities.  The  slow  development  under  such  a  system 
led  to  a  new  law  in  1888  postponing  the  privilege  of 
purchase  to  the  end  of  forty-two  years.  Each  bill 
allowed  for  shorter  terms  under  special  circumstances. 
Tramway  companies  were  similarly  hampered  by  too 
great  eagerness  for  municipal  ownership,  purchasing 
privileges  varying  from  fourteen  to  forty-two  years. 
Permission  for  cable  power  was  at  first  given  only  for 
periods  of  seven  years.  All  were  farther  hampered  by 
sundry  restrictions  of  detail. 

I  wrote,  some  pages  back,  that  virtually  nobody 
opposes  municipal  ownership,  but  I  had  not  then  read 


§  4oog]  Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.  453 

Professor  Meyer's  book,  and  learned  that  these  ex- 
AOO  (e).  owne.-  aggerated  efforts  to  apply  the  principle 
ship  loaded  with  had  made  him  an  opponent  of  it  root 
opera  ion  ^^^   branch ;     but    apparently    municipal 

ownership  in  Great  Britain  practically  means  municipal 
operation,  and  the  trouble  begins  there.  There  are  very 
few  good  principles  where  too  eager  enthusiasm  cannot 
be  as  harmful  as  absolute  neglect. 

The  result  of  the  British  policy  was 
in  ni!mbe/of  *  that  in  1 888  there  were  two  electric-lighting 
atd^ telephones.  plauts  at  work  in  England;  in  Germany, 
under  an  unduly  grasping  policy  of  muni- 
cipal ownership  like  that  of  England,  there  were  fifteen; 
in  the  United  States  there  were  five  hundred  and  seventy- 
four.  When,  in  1888,  the  privilege  of  compulsory  pur- 
chase by  the  municipality  was  limited  in  England  to 
forty-two  years,  private  companies  began  work  at  once, 
and  were  very  largely  bought  out  by  municipalities  on 
mutually  satisfactory  terms.  Yet  with  all  the  municipal 
operation,  the  light  is  not  yet  in  nearly  as  large  a  pro- 
portion of  places,  or  used  iDy  nearly  as  large  a  propor- 
tion of  people,  as  in  the  United  States. 

The  British  policy  regarding  the  telephone  has  been 
the  same  as  regarding  tramways  and  light.  The 
government  deliberately  paralyzed  the  telephone  in  its 
earlier-years,  to  protect  the  government-owned  telegraph, 
just  as  the  municipalities  paralyzed  electric  lighting  to 
protect  their  gas-plants.  The  result  is  a  proportional 
use  of  the  telephone  not  over  a  fourth  that  in  the 
United  States. 

400  w-  ••Poii-  The   associations   of  municipal   govern- 

*'"•"  ments    have   great   power   in    Parliament, 

and  block  nearly  all  efforts  of  private  initiative.  With 
the  greater  openness  of  our  legislatures  to  politics, 
the  conditions  here,  with  municipalities  widely  operating 
the  franchises,  would  be  worse. 

The  matter  is  eating  out  the  old  purity  of  English 
municipal  government,  and  reducing  it  toward  the  level 
of  ours.       The  number  of  laborers  in  municipal  employ 


454  ^^^^  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  400 /i 

400  (h).  English  ^^^s  of  coursG  been  enormously  increased 
municipalization     ^y  the  nriunicipal  tramways,  electric  com- 

dixnoBfous  to  ths  1  -' 

purity  of  govern-  panics,  gas  companics,  etc.  These  laborers, 
'"*"''  like  ours,  are   casting  solid  votes  for   the 

administration  in  power,  while  the  administration 
is  open  to  the  corruptions  which  big  salary  lists  have 
injected  into  our  own  politics  *  (388m).  Local  politics 
mans  public  works  by  favoritism.  The  Lord  Provost 
of  Edinburgh  said  to  the  correspondent  of  the  Chicago 
Trihiine  (I  am  still  following  Professor  Meyer):  "So 
long  as  the  road  is  under  municipal  management,  there 
is  always  a  temptation  to  provide  employment  in  some 
way  for  political  hangers-on.   ..." 

Professor  Meyer  quotes  several  eminent  Britons  to  the 
effect  that  the  employees  of  the  various  municipal  plants 
are  already  exercising  a  dangerous  influence  in  politics. 
Some  publicists  propose  that  they  shall  be  disfranchised, 

*  I  am  largely  indebted  for  English  experience  to  an  important 
letter  from  Mr.  Robert  P.  Porter  in  the  New  York  Times  tor 
October  31,  1899,  and  to  a  friend  from  Glasgow  whose  family- 
has  furnished  the  city  at  least  one  provost,  and  who  tells  me 
that  objection  to  municipal  trading  is  rapidly  growing,  because 
of  the  corruption  it  breeds.  The  latter  sends  a  copy  of  the  Glas- 
gow Herald  which  says:  "The  citizens  of  Glasgow  may  again 
congratulate  themselves  upon  having  had  a  narrow  escape. 
By  28  votes  to  17,  they  have  been  saved  from  embarking  on  the 
perilous  enterprise  of  Municipal  Banking."  He  also  writes, 
September  8,  1900:  "Our  rulers  are  emulous  to  become  bankers 
as  well  as  purveyors  of  water,  light,  power,  telephones  and 
much  else,  and  owners  of  a  tramway  system.  There  is  a 
growing  sense  of  danger  in  Glasgow,  due  to  rapidly  increasing 
taxation  occasioned  by  the  enterprise  of  our  city  fathers.  Two- 
pence on  the  pound  of  rental  has  just  been  added  to  the  rates, 
and  with  increasing  municipal  liabilities  there  is  prospect  of 
further  rise.  Meantime  our  streets  are  badly  paved,  and  are 
like  to  remain  so  as  long  as  our  rulers  find  they  can  gain  greater 
distinction  by  proposing  banking  schemes  than  by  attending  to 
the  streets.  The  lighting  of  the  city  is  also  not  good.  Lighting 
costs  Tnoney  and  docs  not  Ijring  glory."  The  "glorj-" 
sought  for  by  the  "city  father",  seems  to  be  rapidly  becoming 
simply  the  glory  of  voting  conveniences  to  the  proletariat  at 
the  expense  of  producers. 

The  side  against  municipal  trading  was  also  presented  by  Lord 
Avebury  in  the  Contemporary  Revieiv  for  July,  1900.  He  was 
answered  by  Mr.  Robert  Donald  in  the  next  number. 


§  4°°/]    Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.         455 

on  the  same  ground  that  regular  soldiers  are  disfranchised 
in  most  countries  civilized  enough  to  have  a  suffrage. 
Whether  the  municipal  employees  will  be  worse  than  our 
exploiters  of  franchises,  remains  to  be  seen.  But  we 
at  least  get  the  facilities  to  a  degree  that  Great  Britain 
is  not  within  sight  of. 

Professor  Meyer  claims  that  municipal  plant  generally 
costs  more  to  build  than  private  plant.  Some  other 
observers  claim  differently.  That  municipal  wages- tend 
to  surpass  others,  is  matter  of  notoriety,  even  in  the 
United  States. 

Professor  Meyer  wisely  concludes  that 

"  Industrial  progress  comes  not  from  the 
400  (i).  Leaves  people  at  large,  whether  acting  as  individuals 
out  the  able  man.  or  in  the  corporate  capacity  of  state  or  city. 
It  comes  solely  from  a  comparatively  small  body 
of  men  of  unusual  imagination,  daring,  power  of  persuasion 
and  executive  ability.  Those  men  see,  or  believe  they  see, 
possibilities  of  development  and  new  ways  of  doing  things, 
where  the  average  man  sees  naught  but  the  possibility  of  failure. 
They  have  the  courage  of  their  convictions,  as  well  as  the 
power  to  infuse  that  courage  into  others — the  possessors  of  the 
capital  without  which  no  new  idea  and  no  invention  can  be 
tested  and  developed.  Finally,  the  men  in  question  have 
executive  ability,  which  is  the  power  to  plan,  and  the  ability 
to  select  the  men  who  can  be  trusted  with  the  execution  of  their 
plans." 

From  the  chaos  of  statistics  regarding  municipal 
trading  in  Great  Britain,  two  facts  stand  out  in  un- 
questioned clearness.  Taxation  and  debt  have  enor- 
mously increased.  Advocates  claim  that  assets  have 
been  gained  to  offset  the  debt,  and  advantages  to  offset 
the  taxation.  Many  judges  of  high  and  passionless 
authority  deny  both  statements,  and  there  is  much 
evidence  that  while  assets  are  carried  in  the  accounts 
at  cost,  they  have  been  permitted  to  deteriorate  into 
comparative  ineffectiveness. 

The  English  elections  of  1906  and  1907 
ESSZ/A^'seSnt^^were   overwhelmingly  against  municipali- 
zation. 


456  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§40i_/ 

After  this  book  was  in  proof,  there  appeared 
Mr.  Robert  P.  Porter's  "Dangers  of  Municipal  Owner- 
ship". It  deals  mainly  with  Great  Britain,  and  rein- 
forces with  much  interesting  and  instructive  detail,  the 
argument  of  Professor  Meyer.  It  also  makes  a  very 
important  and,  so  far  as  I  know,  new  contribution  to 

401.  Russia  and  the  discifssion,  in  a  demonstration  that 
Socialism,  Russia,  the  most  backward  of  the  Euro- 
pean nations  (perhaps  excepting  Turkey),  is  the  most 
forward  in  socialism — that  the  corrupt  bureaucracy 
.which  is  chaining  Russia  in  her  backward  and  tragic 
position,  is  simply  made  up  of  the  politicians  who  are 
controlhng,  socialist  fashion,  a  large  part  of  the  indus- 
tries which,  in  progressive  countries,  are  left  to  private 
initiative  and  competition. 

Against  this  consideration  it  may  be  urged  that  tlie 
bureaucracy  of  Russia  is  based  on  hereditary  privilege, 
and  that  a  bureaucracy  based  on  universal  suffrage 
would  not  be  open  to  the  same  objections.  If  universal 
suffrage  has  not  provided  equally  bad  bureaucracies  in 
Nc'A'-  York,  Philadelphia  and  Chicago,  the  difference  is 
not  great  enough  to  upset  the  argument. 

I  should  be  glad,  if  space  and  other  circumstances 
justified,  to  give  the  reader  many  citations  from  Mr.  Por- 
ter's work,  but  they  are  not  absolutely  essential  to  the 
discussion  as  already  laid  down,  tho  an  examination 
of  the  work  itself  will  amply  repay  the  trouble.  At 
the  rate  facts  and  arguments  regarding  many  of  the 
civic  relations  have  been  accumvdating  in  recent  years, 
nothing  but  the  daily  newspapers  can  keep  up  with 
them.  Books,  however,  can  give  fundamental  prin- 
ciples and  general  tendencies  more  effectively  than  the 
more  ephemeral  publications  can. 

402.  Austraiasian  The  experience  of  Australasia  *  is  inter- 
experience,  esting  and  instructive.  But  Dr.  Clark 
says  it  is  less  instructive  than  the  European.  Yet  a 
summary   of   his   statement   of   it   may   be   yielded   in 

*  These  points  on  Australasia  arc  mainly  condensed  from 
Clark,  op.  cit. 


§  404]      Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.         457 

deference  to  those  who  think  otherwise,  as  well  as  to 
its  distinctive  interest. 

.„,   p    .,,.  Those  colonies  inherited  from  the  mother 

403.  Conditions  i  •    ,  i        i         i  i       •    -i  • 

unprecedentediy  country  a  highly  developed  civil  service, 
favorable.  ^^^  themselves  evolved  even  a  more  cen- 

tralized government.  Most  of  the  large  share  of  local 
services  performed  in  America  by  unsalaried  officers,  is 
performed  in  Australasia  by  permanent  civil  employees 
who  hold  their  places  for  life.  Thus  the  country  was 
in  a  position  for  handling  government  industries,  far 
in  advance  of  ours. 

Australasia  was  the  first  great  civilized  country  to 
come  into  being  after  the  railway  and  the  telegraph 
were  in  use,  and  it  was  therefore  very  natural  for  her 
governments  to  build  and  operate  them,  as  it  was  natural 
for  earlier  governments  to  build  common  roads.  More- 
over, Australasian  governments  could  borrow  money  in 
London  to  do  this,  cheaper  than  native  individual 
capitalists  could.  The  people  did  not  want  London 
syndicates  exploiting  the  country,  and  all  this  pointed 
to  government  doing  the  work  instead  of  private  enter- 
prise. This,  however,  has  not  prevented  much  similar 
work  by  private  enterprise  since,  in  face  of  the  fact  that 
the  government  was  first  in  the  field — a  suggestive 
symptom  of  the.  oft -proved  superiority  of  private  man- 
agement to  government  management,  at  least  so  far  as 
concerns  economy,  energy  and  efficiency.  Another  symp- 
tom is  the  fact  that  nearly  all  the  government  railroads 
...   «  ,    are  run  at  the  expense  of  the  taxpayers,  at 

railroads  run  at  a  the  rate  of  $66,000,000  for  the  decade 
1894-1904,  not  to  speak  of  $4o,ooo,ooo_ 
taxes  that  could  have  been  expected  from  private  lines' 
in  the  same  period,  if  paid  at  American  rates.  Says 
Dr.  Clark: 

"  Private  railways  thrive  in  the  shadow  of  preponderating 
government  systems.  Private  and  public  street  railways  are 
operated  harmoniously  in  the  same  cities,  or  in  neighboring 
towns  and  states*  and  neither  drives  the  other  from  the  field." 

The  government  rate  in  Australasia  is  three  cents  a 


458  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§405 

mile  for  long  rides  on  railroads,  as  against 

405,  Taxes  highest  our  two   cents ;    and   there   is    an    annual 

among  civilized  r  ■      •        at  '7       i         i 

peoples.!  expense  tor  government   m  New  Zealand 

of  $38  per  capita  as  against  $21  in  the 
United  Kingdom,  $18  in  France,  $10  in  Germany  and 
$8  in  the  United  States.* 

406.  Vice  of  And  yet  this  is  an  excellent  place  to 
statistics.  warn  the  young  student  with  an  illustra- 
tion against  the  characteristic  vice  of  statistics — they 
generally  can  state  but  one  fact,,  while  the  real  situation 
consists  of  many;  and  to  get  at  the  whole  truth,  many 
statistics  should  be  combined.  This  of  course  is  done 
in  many  of  the  tables.  But  so  far  as  I  have  examined, 
I  find  no  serious  effort  to  make  a  comparison  of  the  total 
cost  of  government  per  capita  in  various  countries. 
The  figures  I  have  given  are  only  for  the  national 
governments,  and  it  is  plain  that  the  expenses  of  the 
national  government  in  the  United  States  do  not  cover 
many  matters  that  are  attended  to  by  other  civilized 
national  governments,  but  here  are  attended  to  by  the 
state  governments.  Probably  there  is  no  great  nation 
which  leaves  so  large  a  part  of  its  activities  to  its 
subdivisions,  unless  it  be  Germany;  and,  suggestively 
enough,  in  the  cases  cited,  Germany,  despite  her  great 
military  and  (recently)  naval  expenses,  appears  next  in 
economy  to  the  United  States.  New  Zealand,  on  the 
other  hand,  being  a  colony,  is  exempt  from  many  of 
the  usual  items  of  national  expenditure,  tho  probably 
subjected  to  much  that  is  with  us  borne  by  the  separate 
states.  And  yet— and  as  again  illustrating  the  com- 
plexities apt  to  be  hidden  under  very  simple  figures — in 
the  United  States,  the  expenses  of  the  state  govern- 
ments are  so  small  as  compared  with  those  of  the  national 
and  local  governments,  that  they  do  not  affect  the  matter 
much,  after  all;  while  in  England,  and  probably  in 
Australasia,  the  general  government  bears  many  ex- 
penses— for  instance,   some   connected   with  education 

*  Reports  of  speeches  of  Sir  Joseph  Ward,   Premier  of  New 
Zealand,  in  the  United  States  in  June  and  Jul}',  1906. 


§  4o8]      Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.  459 

and  the  constabulary — that  here  are  borne  by  the  local 
governments. 

The  reader  will  then  probably  conclude,  as  the  writer 
long  since  did,  that  the  value  of  statistics  is  qualitative 
rather  than  quantitative — that  tho  they  generally  show 
tendencies,  they  seldom  give  their  actual  force. 

407.  Telephones  ^^^  public  telegraphs  and  telephones 
and  coal-mines  at  do  not  pay  interest  on  the  investment  in 
^  °""  Australia,  though  they  have  recently  done 
so  in  New  Zealand.  But  the  rates  are  lower  than  in 
the  United  States.  New  Zealand  operates  two  govern- 
ment coal-mines  which  are  new  experiments  and  ran 
$10,000  behind  on  their  interest  account  in  1905. 

Yet  notwithstanding  the  deficits  on  Australasian 
public  enterprises,  the  confidence  of  capital  in  the  re- 
sources of  the  country  is  such  that,  as  already  said,  the 
government  can  borrow  at  good  rates,  which  have,  on 
the  whole,  been  growing  more  favorable. 

408.  Government  ^^^^  Australasian  government  being  the 
success  in  mone"-  great  landlord,  and  being  able  to  borrow 
^"  '"^"  money  better  than  anybody  else  there, 
promoted  settlement  not  only  by  building  railroads  and 
telegraphs  through  its  lands,  but  also  by  loaning  to 
settlers  money  for  improvements.  This  experiment, 
tho  of  no  direct  financial  interest  to  us,  is  worth  recount- 
ing as  a  remarkable  object  lesson  against  the  vulgar 
impression  that  trading  results  only  in  good  to  one  party, 
and  that  of  course  the  sharper  party.  The  governments 
lend  the  settlers  money  for  land  and  improvements,  and 
so  benefit  them;  the  governments  borrow  the  same 
money  from  the  British  bankers,  pay  them  remunera- 
tive interest,  and  so  benefit  them;  and  the  govern- 
ments make  a  margin  of  about  one  per  cent,  between 
what  they  pay  and  what  they  receive,  and  so  benefit 
themselves. 

"The  prevailing  rate  of  interest  on  real-estate  mortgages 
fell  from  seven  to  five  per  cent. — or  the  level  of  the  government 
rate — during  the  first  ten  years  the  law  [for  government  loans 
to   landholders]  was  in  operation.     Bankers  in   New  Zealand 


460  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  .[§  408 

interviewed  as  to  the  effect  of  the  law,  spoke  of  its  results  with- 
out disfavor,  seeming  to  think  that  it  might  have  stimulated 
business.  .  .  .  Private  banks  and  savings  institutions  are  able 
to  place  their  funds  securely  and  profitably  in  spite  of  govern- 
ment competition." 

"  There  has  been  no  exigent  demand  for  state 
409.  Life  insur-  ;[j£g  insurance,  or  the  system  would  surely  have 
^"    '  extended  beyond  New  Zealand  during  the  thirty- 

six  years  it  has  been  in  existence  in  that  colony.  South 
Australia,  with  a  state  corhmission  and  export  department,  has 
also  one  of  the  largest  cooperative  farmers'  commission  com- 
panies in  the  Commonwealth,  which  does  a  business  for  its 
members  five  times  as  great  as  that  done  by  the  government, 
tho  in  more  varied  lines." 

Dr.  Clark  sums  up  his  views: 

"A  conclusion  reached  by  an  outsider  as  to 
neeative"^'"^'°"'       ^^^  utility  of  government  ownership,  from  the 
^        '  experience    of  Australasia,   must    be    so    largely 

qualified  as  to  be  almost  negative.  Public  railways,  telegraphs 
and  land  banks  have  succeeded.  [The  author  must  mean 
succeeded  in  pleasing  the  majority — especially  the  non-tax- 
payers: for  he  himself  shows  how  they  have  not  succeeded 
financially.]  .  .  .  An  outside  observer,  unless  a  faddist  on  gov- 
ernment ownership,  would  probably  come  away  from  Austral- 
asia with  a  feeling  that,  after  all,  this  issue  is  less  important — 
as  affecting  the  social  and  economic  welfare  of  the  people — 
than  those  who  theoretically  discuss  the  subject  suppose. 
Government  ownership  does  not  bankrupt  the  state,  deaden 
private  enterprise,  and  kill  prosperity;  neither  does  it  bring 
a  nation  into  an  industrial  millennium  with  a  bump. 

''The  average  wage-earner  ...  in  exchanging 
demoralized'^^  private  for  state  employment  sacrifices  no  indi- 

vidual freedom.  Independent  or  self-employing 
workers,  on  the  other  hand,  usually  have  property  interests  that 
make  them  averse  to  social  changes ;  and  they  have  something 
that  they  probably  value  still  more,  .  .  .  that  is,  their  power  of 
self-direction.  ...  A  man  who  has  been  his  own  boss  .  .  . 
resents  the  restraint  of  official  supervision.  This  sentiment 
is  widely  diffused  among  the  more  prosperous  working  people 
of  Australasia.  The  experience  of  democracy,  in  Australasia 
as  well  as  America,  goes  to  show  that  the  personal  interest 
of  a  public  captain  of  industry  would  lie  in  conciliating  his 
employees,  at  the  expense  if  necessary  of  the  whole  body  of 
citizens.  .  .  .  As  a  natural  consequence  of  this,  the  investigating 
commissions  of  Parliament  have  found  that  public  are  more 
expensive  than  corresponding  private  undertakings,  and  that 
men  do  not  work  as  well  for  the  state  as  for  private  employers. 


§  413  <3]  Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.  461 

Nothing  illustrates  the  last  fact  more  significantly  than  that  the 
usual  term  among  Australasians  for  an  easy-going  pace  of 
working  is  '  the  government  stroke ' .  " 

^.^  „      ,„    ,  Among  Mr.  Reeves's  arguments*  for  en- 

412,  Some  fallacies.  ,         •         J?      r         .•  r-iT       ^    ^      ■       <ii\t- 

largmg  the  tunctions  01  the  state  is ;  Mis- 
takes may  be  made,  but  we  can  restrain  the  state. 
Trusts  and  combines  we  might  not  be  able  to  control." 
It  would  be  interesting  to  poll  the  citizens  of  New  York, 
Philadelphia  and  Chicago,  and  a  good  many  other  places, 
on  this  question.  But  as  to  the  state,  it  is  the  incon- 
testable fact  that  it  is  possible  in  a  single  day  (the 
only  after  a  hard-fought  campaign)  to  "turn  the  rascals 
out".  But  it  is  equally  incontestable  that  they  have 
always  got  back  again.  One  is  tempted  to  believe 
that  in  a  given  state  of  human  nature,  one  method,  in 
the  long  run,  does  about  as  well  as  another,  and  that 
the  only  advance  that  can  be  made  permanent  is  in 
human  nature  itself.  But  this  skepticism  regarding 
methods  should  be  guarded  against.  Because  of  some 
defect  of  detail,  the  best  methods  often  fail  when  first 
tried;  but  something  is  learned  at  each  attempt,  even 
be  it  no  more  than  what  to  avoid  in  future. 

Another  equally  striking  and  equally  questionable 
remark  of  Mr.  Reeves  is  that  "  newspapers  criticise  the 
public  service  in  a  way  which  they  will  not  or  dare  not 
criticise  private  enterprise.  State  management,  there- 
fore, carries  with  it  the  great  guarantee  of  publicity." 
With  this  statement,  compare  the  notorious  difficulty  of 
getting  correct  accounts  of  state  enterprises,  from  Aus- 
tralia or  anywhere  else. 

413.  The  latest  Notwithstanding  that  the  American  ex- 
American  experi-  perience  of  government  operation  is  com- 
^"'^^'  paratively  trifling,  it  has  already  been 
abandoned  in  several  cases  in  addition  to  those  already 
.40  ,  ,  r     u        given.     In  1901;,  the  city#f  Omaha  for  the 

413  ra;,  Omaha.        9     ^  ^-  ■        ■     /  ^ixi        ta 

nrst  time  m  sixteen  years,  elected  a  Demo- 
cratic administration,  because  the  Democrats  promised 

*  Op.  cit. 


462  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§413^ 

municipal  operation.     A  special  letter  to  the  New  York 
Times  thus  related  the  experience:  ^    j 

"  The  Democrats  promised  municipal  ownership,  of  just 
about  all  the  public  utilities,  even  down  to  advocating  that  the 
city  own  the  railroad  switch-tracks  in  the  wholesale  districts 
and  rent  these  tracks  to  the  different  railroads.  .  .  .  Omaha 
went  wild  over  the  idea.  .  .  .  After  the  election  the  cost  .  '.  . 
began  to  be  counted.  The' Board  of  Engineers  .  .  .  made  a  re- 
port that  just  doubled  the  price  the  city  was  willing  to  pay  for 
the  water  system,  and  the  water  company  went  into  court  to 
compel  the  city  to  pay.  .  .  .  When  the  taxpaj^ers  saw  that 
they  would  be  compelled  to  pay  more  than  $6,000,000  for  prop- 
erty which  they  had  expected  to  get  for  $3,000,000  there  was 
a  howl  from  them. 

"  Immediately  afterward  it  was  found  that  the  fund  on  which 
the  municipal  asphalt  plant  was  expected  to  keep  running  all 
the  summer  was  exhausted  in  July.  .  .  .  Then  the  city  market- 
house  scandal  opened  up  afresh.  This  was  the  first  effort  of 
Omaha  to  go  into  municipal-ownership  business.   .   .   . 

"A  big  house  was  erected  on  one  of  the  principal  streets  at  a 
cost  of  $12,000,  altho  almost  any  contractor  in  the  city  would 
duplicate  the  building  for  $5,000.  Then  the  Council  made 
stringent  laws  forcing  the  commission  men  to  move  into  the 
market-house.  Two  of  them  did  so.  .  .  .  The  others  ignored 
the  order.  After  a  month  or  so  the  two  .  .  .  moved  out  and 
the  doors  were  closed. 

"And  so,  between  the  market-house  scandal,  the  asphalt 
works,  the  three-million-dollar  overcharge  in  the  waterworks 
plant,  and  the  faihire  of  the  City  Council  to  take  any  steps  to 
rescue  the  city  from  the  muddle  it  has  gotten  into,  taxpayers 
are  afraid  of  indulging  any  further  in  municipal-ownership  ideas." 

So  far  as  American  experience  goes,  the  last  important 
testimony  was  gathered  and  discussed  at  the  meeting 
of  the  Political  Science  Association  in  Baltimore,  Decem- 
ber 26  to  29,  1895.*  The  discussion  was  of  "The  Case 
for  Municipal  Ownership",  but  Operation  was  certainly 
meant,  as  there  had  not  then  developed  any  serious 
opinion  against  Ownership.  The  proponent  of  "the 
case  for"  announced  its  triumphant  success  in  America, 
413  (b).  A  weak  but  citcd  in  evidence  only  the  electric-light- 
showin'g.  in^plants  of  Detroit,   Chicago  and  Alle- 

gheny;   sundry  markets  and  docks  which  require  vir- 

*  These  reports,  made  as  listener,  I  have  checked  from  the 
"Proceedings". 


§  41.3  '^J   Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.  463 

tuaily  no  'operation",  and  where,  in  the  nature  of  the 
case,  private  operation  is  virtually  unknown;  the  Cin- 
cinnati Southern  Railway,  which  is  not  municipally 
operated  at  all,  but  leased  to  a  private  corporation; 
and  the  water-plants  of  some  half-dozen  cities  where 
water  runs  down  hill  under  municipal  supervision  (some 
of  them,  cities  like  New  York  and  Boston,  being  cases 
where  water  has  been  acting  that  way,  undisturbed  by 
these  new  questions  of  municipal  operation,  for  over 
fifty  years).  The  failures  and  wastes  were  not  embraced 
in  his  schedule. 

Then  he  proceeded  to  show,  very  cor- 
m(c).  The  strong  rcctly,  that  the  strong  men  of  the  cities 

man  will  control  jiii  ji  i  i  ii- 

under  any  system.    UOW     COntrol     them      thrOUgll      the      publlC- 

service  corporations;  and  to  prove  con- 
clusively that  if  there  were  no  public-service  corpora- 
tions, the  strong  men  would  not  control  the  cities 
through  them.  He  omitted,  however,  to  prove  that 
if  the  strong  men  did  not  control  in  that  way,  they 
would  not  control  at  all.  So  far  as  experience  has  been 
accumulated,  they  always  have  controlled;  and  so  far  as 
the  future  can  be  judged  from  the  past,  they  always 
will  control,  until  there  shall  be  so  much  advance  in 
the  strength  of  weaker  men  that  all  men  will  be  strong, 
and  democracy  will  be  a  fact  as  well  as  a  name.  At 
present,  however,  the  weaker  men  are  not  paying  much 
attention  to  developing  their  strength,  but  are  absorbed 
in  schemes  for  massing  what  strength  they  have,  to  get 
more  conveniences  at  the  expense  of  those  who  are 
already  stronger. 

The    same    speaker    at    the    Baltimore 
t]iVprivhege°.'"''^  meeting  brought  up  as  an  argument  for 

municipal  operation,  the  demonstrated 
and  established  argument  against  it — that  "monopoly 
is  always  indolent".  Apparently  he  failed  to  realize 
that  there  can  be  no  other  monopoly  as  nearly  im- 
pregnable as  a  government  monopoly.  He  claimed  that 
the  destruction  of  private  operation  would  be  the  de- 
struction of  privilege.  Apparently  he  had  never  heard 
of  Tammany  Hall  or  the  privileges  enjoyed  by  Tweed 


464  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  413^ 

and  Croker  and  their  fellows,  even  with  municipal 
operation  of  all  the  franchises  far  beyond  their 
grasp. 

He  made  a  number  of  other  claims  which,  like  the 
claims  generally  made  for  extension  of  government 
functions,  rest  on  about  equally  strong  foundations 
with  those  cited.  He  'even  supported  his  contentions 
by  the  statement  that  "transit,  light  and  water  .  .  . 
next  to  rent  .  .  .  are  the  heaviest  item  in  the  domestic 
budget". 

When  the  "Case  for  Municipal  Ownership"  (Opera- 
tion was  meant  all  the  time)  is  thus  put  before  the 
representative  Political  Science  Association  of  America, 
farther  discussion  hardly  seems  called  for. 

In  answering  the  proponent  so  fully  cited,  Professor 
Daniels  said  that  the  statistics  so  far  gathered — in  the 
report  of  the  American  Commissioner  of  Labor  (1S99) 
and  in  the  Census  Bulletins  for  1890 — do  not  "settle 
even  remotely  the  disputed  question";  that  govern- 
ments do  not  pay  salaries  to  attract  the  best  talent 
away  from  private  corporations;  and  that  he  thinks 
that  the  solution  of  the  whole  topic  lies  in  reforming 
politics  before  giving  over  franchises  to  political  opera- 
tion; and  in  the  meantime,  having  the  ownership  of 
them  retained  by  the  cities,  and  the  operation  leased  to 
private  enterprise,  for  either  fixed  sums  or  percentages 
of  receipts  or  profits. 

413  (e).  Our  pri-  Profcssor  Rowc  Called  attention  to  the 
lfue'"than''^  surprise  foreigners  feel  at  the  enterprise, 
Europe's,  initiative     and     liberality     for     improved 

methods,  of  our  public-service  corporations;  which  indi- 
cates that  those  of  Europe  leave  more  room  to  desire 
government  operation  than  ours  do. 

Several  other  speakers  followed  with  a  quite  general 
agreement  that  municipal  officers  are  tempted  to  make 
dangerously  favorable  showings  for  municipal  operations, 
by  allowing  too  little  for  repair  and  renewal ;  that  Euro- 
pean experience  is  immature  and  uncertain,  American 
experience  vastly  more  so,  and  European  conditions  too 
different  from  American  to  afford  any  guidance. 


§  413/]     Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.       465 

A\Z(f).  Democracy  The  proponent  for  Municipal  Operation 
on  trial.  ^^j^j  make  one  statement  in  various  forms, 

which  is  incontrovertible,  and  which  justifies  a  little 
emphasis.  He  said:  "The  question  is  not  so  much. 
Do  we  believe  in  municipal  ownership?"  (Operation.) 
"The  question  is:  Do  we  believe  in  democracy?" 
That  is  it  exactly,  and  well,  stated.  It  would  be  better 
stated,  however,  as:  Do  we  believe  in  democracy  to  the 
extent  of  municipal  operation?  To  that  question,  prob- 
ably the  answer  of  the  sanest  students  would  generally 
be  something  like:  So  far  as  helping  water  run  down 
hill,  we  do.  So  far  as  streets  and  sewers,  we  believe  in 
democracy's  ability  to  make,  repair  and  clean  them — 
very  badly;  but  for  abundant  reasons,  democracy  may 
be  the  best  available  agency.  So  far  as  transit,  light 
and  the  other  franchises,  the  case  is  yet  to  be  proven: 
where  government  has  done  them  best,  democracy  is 
unknown  (426,426c);  but  even  there,  testimony,  and 
even  experience,  conflict  a  good  deal,  while  in  America, 
the  only  country  but  France  where  democracy  plays  any 
part  in  municipal  affairs,  there  is  virtually  no  experience 
at  all. 

The  proponent  for  Municipal  Ownership  also  said 
that  it  "is  the  struggle  of  democracy  seeking  to  divorce 
itself  from  a  privileged  class".  It  is  that,  and  more. 
As  long  as  the  differences  in  men  are  as  great  as  now, 
the  few  will  inevitably  enjoy  privileges  that  the  many 
cannot  know;  the  many  are  constantly  striving  for  a 
larger  share  of  what  the  few  produce,  not  to  speak  of 
what  some  of  the  few  filch  from  all.  Yet  beyond  a 
moderate  degree,  it  does  the  weak  no  good  to  get  the 
things  the  strong  have  made:  for  they  cannot  handle 
them.  To  determine  where  that  moderate  degree  is, 
regarding  municipal  franchises,  is  now  matter  of 
experiment.  But  municipal  operation  has  not  its  rela- 
tively largest  following  among  those  who  intelligently 
believe  that,  in  even  a  moderate  degree,  it  will  be  an 
economy,  or  who  care  anything  about  economy.  Much 
its  largest  relative  following  is  among  those  who  merely 
look  forward  to  ultimately  getting  transit,  light,  heat 


466  The  Promotion  oj  Convenience.  [§413/ 

and  all  other  good  things  without  paying  for  them; 
not  among  those  who  expect  municipal  operation  to 
reduce  their  taxes,  but  among  those  who  pay  no  taxes 
at  all. 

Some  ^^   ^^^   same   session   of   the    Political 

interesting  ex-  Scicuce  Association,  a  distinguished  mem- 
penences.  ^^^  living  in  a  Western  university  town 

said  to  a  member  living  in  an  Eastern  university  town : 
"I'm  not  prepared  to  advocate  municipal  operation 
everywhere,  but  it's  just  the  thing  for  us  where  I  live: 
for  the  university  runs  the  town." 

"Yes",  answered  his  friend,  "just  the  thing— as 
long  as  the  university  runs  the  town.  I  thought  so  a 
few  years  ago  regarding  my  town,  but  the  university 
doesn't  run  the  town  any  more:  Labor  has  been  assert- 
ing itself." 

"Oh,  well,  we  have  no  labor  troubles." 

"You  will  have,  if  you  have  any  labor.  We  too  had 
*no  labor  troubles'.  But  the  agitators  heard  of  our 
deplorable  condition,  and  sent  the  'organizer '  to  remedy 
it.  Since  then  our  little  town  has  had  proportionally 
as  many  strikes  and  as  much  idleness  and  suspended 
work,  as  the  proudest  cities.  But  the  unions  have  not 
been  content  with  this.  They  wanted  to  go  into  politics : 
they  want  to  rule  everything  now,  you  know,  and 
think  they  can  do  it.  Well,  cheap  light  and  free 
whiskey  gave  them  a  rallying-cry.  They  made  a  black- 
smith mayor.  He  began  building  an  electric-light 
plant  without  the  assistance  of  the  professor  of  elec- 
tricity, and  turned  the  professor  of  engineering  off  the 
board  of  public  works,  and  the  professors  of  the  medical 
school  oft  the  board  of  health;  and  put  in  his  friends 
from  the  ranks  of  '  Labor '.  So  you  see  the  university  no 
longer  runs  the  town.  Witliin  five  years,  your  university 
won't  run  your  town.  I'll  take  your  opinion  of  municipal 
operation  then.'' 

Since  the  foregoing  conversation,  some  other  facts 
worth  noting  have  taken  place  in  the  Eastern  university 
town.     Building,  which  was  expected  to  be  very  lively 


§413^"]     Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.        467 

m  the  following  spring,  was  very  dull.  Some  say  the 
unions  had  forced  wages  too  high.  Some  say  that 
capitalists  hesitate  to  invest  as  freely  in  a  town  run 
by  its  present  authorities,  as  they  did  in  a.  town  "run 
by  the  university  ". 

In  searching  the  mass  of  literature  on  the  subject, 
one  finds  two  characteristics  pervading  the  arguments 
in  favor  of  municipal  operation,  and  a  statement  of  those 
characteristics  seems  to  sum  up  the  situation.  One 
413  (h).  Fallacious  is  that  the  evils  of  the  established  system 
reasoning.  ^j-g  enumerated,  and  the  claim  made  re- 

garding each,  that  the  proposed  system  would  cure  it. 
The  other  is  that  ideal  conditions  are  enumerated, 
and  the  claim  made  that  the  proposed  system  would 
effect  them.  Both  claims  are  virtually  gratuitous. 
There  is  not  enough  experience  to  support  either. 

One  argument  advanced  by  Professor  Zueblin,  leads 
to  a  point  that  calls  for  expansion.  Because  govern- 
ments have  been  very  ineffective  in  inspecting  and  con- 
trolling the  operation  of  municipal  utilities  by  private 
interests,  he  advises  that  they  should  undertake  the  en- 
tire management.  How  the  honesty  and  capacity  for 
entire  management  are  to  be  found  in  organizations 
that  cannot  muster  enough  of  those  qualities  for  effect- 
ive criticism  and  regulation,  he  does  not  state.  But 
as  he  does  state  his  ideal,  it  may  be  well  to  state  a  more 
modest,  and  therefore  more  nearly  realizable,  one 
already  hinted  at.  It  is  already  the  fashion,  when 
413  (i),  Desirabii-  ^-b^ses  become  unbearable,  to  appoint 
ity  of 'publicity      morc     or    Icss    Special    commissions,  such 

and  commissions,  j_i         r     j.         j.    j.       r^  /-\  ■      • 

as  the  interstate  Commerce  Commission, 
the  Standard  Oil  and  the  Beef  and  Insurance  Com- 
missions to  look  into  them  and  suggest  remedies. 
Even  in  their  spasmodic,  lax  and  inchoate  and  rudi- 
mentary manifestations,  all  the  commissions  have 
been  more  or  less  useful,  some  of  them  very  useful. 
But  permanent  commissions  regarding  permanent  mat- 
ters, like  the  various  state  railroad  commissions,    are 


468  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§413^ 

also  desirable,  tho  too  apt  to  lapse  into  innocuous  desue- 
tude. Yet  the  mere  publicity  their  examinations  have 
given  to  abuses,  does  a  very  great  deal  toward  rem- 
edying them.  Is  it  not  reasonable,  then,  to  expect  and 
strive  that  these  spasmodic  agencies  shall  be  greatly 
improved,  and  that  from  them  shall  be  evolved  perma- 
nent commissions  for  '  the  constant  and  more  skilled 
and  more  effective  inspection  and  control  of  all  public 
utilities — not  only  those,  like  the  railroads,  tramways 
and  street  pipes,  that  are,  in-  the  nature  of  things, 
monopolies;  but  also  those,  like  the  oil  and  beef  in- 
dustries, that  under  business  combination  have  virtu- 
ally grown  to  be  monopolies? 

This  certainly  seems  the  next  stage  in 
oiiest'he  ideal'  improvement,  and  a  stage  that  may  be  on 
^whtn%mcUcabL  ^^^  ^^^  toward  government  operation  of 
the  franchises  naturally  monopolistic,  and 
effective  exaction  of  justice  from  businesses  only  arti- 
ficially monopolistic.  It  is  not  impossible  that  justice 
can  be  exacted  only  by  methods  which  shall  keep  all 
non-government  business,  like  oil,  coal  and  beef,  open 
to  competition.  But  there  is  probably  more  reason  to 
hope  for  success  regarding  private  enterprises,  from 
the  wider  diffusion  among  men  of  ability  to  compete — 
from  the  rise  of  more  men  of  organizing  capacity,  than 
from  government  regulation.  There  is  room  for  both 
influences,  and  no  reason  why  they  should  not  work 
together.  A  third  agency  should  not  be  lost  sight  of 
— many  men  who  are  not  often  run  away  with  by  their 
imaginations  believe  that  there  is  a  rapid  increase  in 
knowledge  of  civic  affairs  and  sense  of  public  responsi- 
bility, and  hope  much  from  them. 

414,  Summary  and  On  the  whole,  then,  the  drift  of  experi- 
conciusions.  ence  regarding  municipalization  seems  to 

be  that  in  all  matters  which  involve  tearing  up  the 
streets,  honest  municipalization  would  probably  be 
much  better  than  private  control,  even  if  the  control 
were  competitive:  but  also,  alas,  that  honest  munici- 
palization is  generally  so  far  out  of  sight  in  America, 


§  414  <^]     Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.       469 

that  probably  present  evils  are  much  less  than  such  mu- 
nicipalization as  we  could  get  in  most  places  at  present. 

Lecky  declared  that  "the  New  York  Commission  of 
1876  [the  Commission  appointed  by  Governor  Tilden  in 
1875]  probably  understated  the  case  when  they  declared 
that  more  than  half  of  all  the  present  city  debts  in  the 
United  States  are  the  direct  results  of  intentional  and 
corrupt  misrule".  There  is  nothing  like  this  in  Eng- 
land; and  yet,  despite  much  difference  of  opinion,  the 
leading  authorities  there  do  not  wish  farther  to  trust 
their  municipalities  with  the  conduct  of  such  utilities 
as  can  be  cared  for  by  private  enterprise. 

Leaving  out  such  matters  as  gas,  electricity  and  the 
telephone,  which  are  not  quite  natural  monopolies, 
whether  it  would  be  wiser  for  the  government  to  take 
all  the  natural  monopolies  under  its  own  charge,  depends, 
as  already  said,  on  the  degree  of  civilization.  Probably 
early  in  '99  most  students  would  have  said  that  Great 
Britain  and  Germany  had  already  attained  the  degree 
of  civilization  necessary;  but  the  verdict  would  probably 
be  different  now.  In  England  "municipal  trading"  has 
more  than  doubled  municipal  indebtedness, 
taxation  increased  and  nearly  doubled  municipal  taxation, 
tionate  results'  while  population  has  only  increased  about 
a  quarter,  and  the  municipalities  have 
nothing  to  show  for  the  debts,  in  proportion  to  their 
amounts,  especially  as  plant  had  generally  been  suffered 
to  become  antiquated,  instead  of  being  kept  up  to  the 
mark,  as  it  must  be  kept  under  private  competition. 

Moreover,  it  is  claimed,  the  people  are  not  getting, 
in  return  for  their  increased  taxation,  conveniences  at 
all  in  proportion  to  the  increase,  especially  as  people  are 
paying  for  most  of  the  conveniences  as  used,  tho  un- 
doubtedly, in  many  cases,  at  lower  apparent  rates  than 
those  charged  by  the  private  companies,  the  rest  being 
generally  made  up  by  taxation. 

The  effects  of  municipal  obstruction  and  supineness 
on  opportunities  for  capital  and  labor,  have  been  made 
too  plain  to  occupy  us  farther ;  but  what  must  they  be  on 


470  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§4146 

414  (b).  English  inventive  talent  ?  That  is  perhaps  the  most 
municipalization     serious  question  in  the  whole  situation.   The 

obstructive,  espe-  .       '■,     .  ,      ■  ,       ■        . 

daily  to  inuentiue  case  IS  plain  enougli  m  such  instances  as 
*"'*"*•  those  just  cited ;  but  there  is  a  general  con- 

viction that  governmental  bodies  can  never  be  expected 
to  be  on  the  lookout  for  new  inventions  or  opportunities 
with  the  keenness  forced  by  private  competition.  Presi- 
dent Hadley  says  that :  ' '  Tho  half  the  railroads  and  nine 
tenths  of  the  telegraphs  of  the  world  are  in  government 
hands,  all  the  large  improvements  of  method  in  these 
lines  have  been  made  under  private  enterprise."  As 
natural  monopolies  cannot  have  the  benefit  of  compe- 
tition, if  they  are  left  to  municipal  development,  double 
care  is  needed  to  see  that  they  are  developed;  but  first 
that  they  are  not  forced  to  municipal  development  until 
experience  and  politics  are  more  advanced  than  a 
good  many  enlightened  people  believe  they  generally 
are  yet,  even  in  England. 

As  to  the  general  character  of  municipal 
fynment'sl/lle.'"'  ^^hoT,  before  Coloucl  Waring  came,  and 
since  Colonel  Waring  died,  we  have  most 
of  us  noticed  "the  man  with  the  hoe"  cleaning  streets 
under  ordinary  American  administration,  and  we  know 
the  contrast  between  him  and  the  laborer  who  is  keenly 
watched  in  private  competition.  This  is  especially 
noticeable  when  New  York's  snow  and  ice  is  being 
cleaned  away.  So,  also,  are  noticeable  the  crowds  of 
laborers  at  work  on  trifling  bits  of  snow  and  ice  that 
might  as  well  be  left  for  the  sun.  Even  in  Australasia, 
the  standard  expression  for  slow  and  pottering  labor  is 
"the  government  stroke." 

One  safeguard  worth  considering  against  the  dangers 
of  municipalization,  has  been  pretty  obvious  in  the 
course  of  our  discussion.  So  far  as  private  enterprise 
is  left  free  to  come  in  when  government  work  is  shabbily 
done,  the  possibility  of  its  coming  might  have  some 
effect  in  holding  government  work  up  to  the  mark. 
But  we  have  seen  that  one  of  the  marked  effects  of 
municipalization  in  England  is  to  shut  out  private  enter- 


§  414^]    Latest  Aspects  of  Government  Operation.         471 

prise,  even  from  wider  areas  than  municipalization  cov- 
ers. On  the  other  hand,  government  work,  even  when  the 
threat  of  private  competition  is  desirable  as  a  corrective 
of  it,  may  often  be  desirable  as  a  guard  against  monopo- 
lies— monopolies  that  even  votes  cannot  reach,  ajid  that 
can  defend  themselves  from  the  stimulus  and  restraint  of 
competition.  Private  enterprise  and  municipal  enterprise, 
like  all  human  enterprise,  have  both  their  merits  and 
their  dangers.     The  dividing  line  seems  to  be  that  of 

natural  monopoly.  Where  the  benefit  of 
/zaJow'rfes/raftX" '  competition  cannot  be  had,  it  is  mainly  a 
against  monopoly.   Question  of  the  purity  of  poHtics  whether 

the  government  would  better  take  hold; 
but  where  private  competition  can  be  expected  to  give 
the  people  the  usual  benefit  of  keen  enterprise  and  low 
prices,  government  should  be  kept  out.  It  is  doubtful 
if  any  large  community  among  us  is  yet  civilized  enough 
to  municipalize  much  wisely,  tho  from  one  point  of 
view  we  are  oz^cr-civilized  for  it:  our  suffrage  is  too 
advanced  (426-426  c). 

Municipalities  do  not  manage  such  affairs  as  well  as 
private  corporations,  because  the  officers  of  private 
corporations  are  elected  only  by  those  who  have  money 
directly  at  stake;  while  the  officers  of  cities  are  largely 
elected  by  people  who  pay  no  taxes  and  have  no  money. 

It  is  probably  too  late  to  ask  why  people  are  per- 
mitted to  vote  in  matters  where  they  do  not  have 
to  stand  the  consequences.  But  they  are  permitted, 
and  revolutions  do  not  often  go  backwards.  The  only 
remedy  that  now  seems  practicable  is  to  help  such  people 
get  ahead  so  that  they  too  will  have  something  at  stake. 

.,.,,„  .  .  ,.  We  touched  one  argument  for  munici- 
zation  as  training  palization  whcn  we  said  that  everybody 
in  citizenship.  -^Quld  complaiu  of  poor  water  and  poor 
postal  service :  some  people  think  that  if  people  were  de- 
pendent on  government  for  more  of  their  conveniences, 
they  would  take  more  interest  in  government  and 
reform  it.     The  idea  is  not  impossible,  but  it  is  so  very 


472  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  414^ 

uncertain,  that  it  will  not  do  to  trust  much  to  it  before 
knowing  more  about  it.  It  is  indeed  an  argument  for 
going  into  municipalization,  but  going  slow.  It  should 
be  tried  tentatively:  for  if  carried  to  an  extreme,  it  is 
simply  like  the  older  panaceas  which,  when  analyzed, 
are  merely  disguised  schemes  for  robbing  the  rich  to 
help  the  poor,  and  are  generally  accompanied  by  the 
belief  that  if  the  plan  were  carried  out  to  its  widest  ex- 
treme, some  improvement  in  the  lot  of  the  poor  would 
result — a  belief  that  is  generally  an  utter  fallacy. 

The  argument  that  public  utilities  conducted  at  tax- 
payers' risk  would  lead  the  taxpayer  to  greater  attention 
to  his  public  duties,  can  appeal,  in  New  York  City  for 
instance,  to  only  one  voter  in  ten:  for  only  that  pro- 
portion are  taxpayers.  The  argument  would  of  course 
carry  more  weight  in  communities  w^here  the  proportion 
of  taxpayers  is  larger. 

The  situation  is  a  good  deal  like  that  of  the  mother 
who  did  not  want  her  boy  to  go  into  the  water  before 
he  knew  how  to  swim :  if  she  meant  that  he  should  not 
go  in  all  the  way — that  he  should  wade,  and  not  plunge 
where  it  was  over  his  head,  she  was  a  veiy  sensible 
woman. 


CHAPTER   XXXI. 

PECULIAR    AMERICAN    MUNICIPAL    DIFFICULTIES. 

415.  American  American  municipal  operation  is  exposed 
municipal  corruption  to  peculiar  dangers.  The  government  of 
many  American  cities  has  long  been  among  the  most 
corrupt — quite  probably  the  most  corrupt,  in  the  civilized 
world;  and  since  the  civil  war,  the  general  government 
of  the  United  States  has  been  in  danger  of  falHng  into 
the  same  condition.  Let  us  consider  a  bit  of  history 
which  may  make  it  easier  to  understand  our  peculiar 
conditions. 

416.  New  Yorl<  Ii^  New  York  shortly  before  the  year 
'"1^70'  1870,  an  enormous  amount  had  been 
done  in  the  way  of  public  improvements.  It  was  then 
found  that  for  a  long  time  nearly  everything  bought  for 
city  use,  and  nearly  all  work  done  on  the  streets,  parks, 
aqueducts  and  public  buildings,  had  been  charged  to 
the  taxpayers  at  many  times  its  cost,  and  the  difference 
stolen  by  the  chief  officials.  From  what  portion  of 
the  taxes  was  actually  paid  to  workmen,  they  had 
been  made  to  pay  back  a  part  to  the  men  who  employed 
them,  as  a  condition  of  getting  and  keeping  their  places. 
In  the  same  way,  the  persons  receiving  these  contribu- 
tions, had  to  pay  the  officials  just  above  them,  and  so 
on  up  to  the  highest  officials  of  all.  The  money  so  paid 
came  out  of  the  taxpayers,  because  the  work  was  really 
done  for  only  what  the  workmen  were  able  actually  to 
keep  for  themselves.  The  rest  could  have  been  saved 
if  it  had  not  gone  into  the  pockets  of  the  politicians. 
When  the  state  of  affairs  was  discovered,  the  govern- 

473 


474  ^^^  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  416 

ment  was  overthrown,  a  great  many  of  the  criminals 
fled,  and  the  chief  one,  Wilham  M.  Tweed,  who  had 
been  the  most  powerful  man  in  any  city  in  the  civilized 
world  (unless  that  includes  Russia),  was  put  in  prison, 
where  he  died. 

The  cure  was  not  permanent.  By 
416  (a).  In  1894.  ^g^^  tilings  wcrc  found  to  be  just  as  bad, 
but  principally  by  different  methods.  The  officials 
helped  demagogues  and  sentimentalists  to  get  a  law 
passed  enabling  corrupt  officials  to  pay  the  city  laborers 
more  than  the  same  class  of  laborers  could  get  elsewhere. 
Then  the  officials  made  the  laborers  hand  over  the  differ- 
ence. 

New  schemes  of  plunder  in  controlling 
416  (b).  in  1898.  p^|3ii(,  works,  Were  devised  in  New  York 
after  the  election  of  1898.  The  department  whose  duty 
it  is  to  regulate  buildings  for  strength  and  safety  against 
fire,  was  made  to  favor  certain  materials  in  preference 
to  others;  and  the  politicians  and  their  families  were 
found  to  be  largely  interested  in  the  manufacture  of 
these  materials. 

What   would   have  been   the   situation   if  the   same 
politicians  had   been  required  to   build  a  large  number 
of  houses  for  the  poor? 
.,7  p.,       ,  The  legislature  was  corrupt  too.     Each 

4-17,  City  works  .    .         °  .  ^ 

are  the  plums  of  political  party  in  the  whole  state  was 
rural  as  well  as  under  the  management  of  corrupt  men 
who  made  the  politics  of  city  and  state 
work  together  for  their  profit.  The  legislature  shared 
the  corruption  of  the  city,  because  there  is  so  much 
public  work  done  in  cities,  that  the  possible  spoils  are 
very  rich:  therefore  corrupt  politicians  in  the  legis- 
lature are  always  ready  to  join  the  corrupt  politicians 
of  the  cities  in  seeking  them.  This  is  an  added  objec- 
tion to  increasing  the  number  of  things  done  by  the 
cities. 

.^g  J,     .,  The  money  collected  by  taxing  munici- 

contrasted  with  palities,  large  and  small,  is  over  three 
the  nation.  quarters  as  much  as  that  collected  for  the 

government  of  the  nation  as  a  nation,  including  all 


§  42o]    Peculiar  American  Municipal  Difficulties.        475 

civil  and  diplomatic  officers,  army,  navy,  lighthouses, 
harbor  improvements,  and  national  works  of  every  kind. 
Moreover,  the  local  taxes  represent  by  all  odds  the 
more  "swag":  politics  has  been  kept  out  of  the  navy, 
and  until  lately  almost  out  of  the  army,  and  out  of 
many  other  departments  of  the  national  government. 
In  them,  appointments  have  not  been  generally  made 
by  "pulls",  but  have  been  made  with  reference  to  fit- 
ness. 

419.  Contractors  Much    plundering    can    easily    be    pre- 

'"  °^'^^-  vented   by   imposing   heavy   penalties   on 

public  officers  who  are  financially  interested  in  municipal 
works.  Simple  as  this  is,  many  people  do  not  see  the 
point.  It  is  frequent  for  the  leading  contractor  of  a 
village  to  be  an  officer  regulating  the  public  works, 
his  mechanical  experience  being  considered  worth 
having.  The  charters  of  some  cities  provide  against 
it,  but  the  wrong-doing  officers  can  cover  up  their 
tracks. 


,„n  M  ,.     ,  Under  American  local  governments,  it 

420.  National  .  i-    •    •  n 

parties  in  local  IS  Specially  easy  tor  politicians  to  profit 
^  ^"^^'  from  public  work,  because  the  good  people 

of  localities  are  so  ready  to  divide  according  to  their  na- 
tional parties,  that  it  is  hard  to  unite  them  solely  on  ques- 
tions affecting  the  localities.  Meanwhile  the  bad  people 
keep  together  to  plunder.  The  good  people  divide 
from  a  desire  to  keep  their  party  organizations  active 
for  national  questions.  There  is  no  means  by  which 
the  corrupt  politicians  (and  occasional  honest  but 
stupid  ones)  fool  the  people  more  and  plunder  them 
more,  than  by  leading  them  to  carry  national  ques- 
tions into  city  politics.  As  an  illustration:  between  the 
civil  war  and  the  Spanish  war,  the  principal  national 
questions  were  between  protection  and  free  trade,  and 
between  good  money  and  bad  money.  Those  who 
supported  the  first  of  each  were  Republicans,  the  others 
Democrats.  Now,  in  virtually  every  city,  town  and 
village   in   the   land,   when  people  wanted  officers   to 


/j.y6  TJw  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  420 

care  for  their  streets,  water,  sewerage,  health,  poHce 
and  petty  courts,  they  selected  these  officers,  not  with 
reference  to  the  work  they  were  to  do,  but  nominally, 
at  least,  with  reference  to  their  opinions  on  the  tariff 
and  on  silver.  Soon  after  the  Spanish  war,  local 
offic"ers  began  to  be  selected  with  reference  to  "im- 
perialism". 

The  same  things  account  for  this  ridiculous  state  of 
affairs,  that  account  for  most  ridiculous  states  of  affairs 
in  politics — first,  of  course,  ignorance  and  venality; 
then  some  defects  in  organization;  and  mainly,  as  is 
so  often  the  case,  an  outgrown  situation  kept  alive  by 
interests  that  have  become  established  under  it.  When 
our  national  government  began,  its  tender  and  pre- 
carious life  was  the  one  absorbing  object  of  public 
interest.  Cities  were  small,  and  many  of  the  things 
now  attended  to  by  their  governments,  unknown.  The 
one  object  of  political  faith  was  national  party,  and  fidel- 
ity to  it  was  put  on  a  par  with  honor  and  religion.  This 
spirit  is  not  dead  yet,  especially  among  the  stupid  and 
ignorant  majority,  and  it  is  kept  alive  there  by  the  party 
managers  who  find  their  profit  in  it. 

Moreover,  the  Fathers  gave  us  a  special  legacy  in  the 
Constitution  itself,  which  helps  bring  the  national  parties 
into  local  politics.  The  election  of  United  States  senators 
by  the  legislatures,  forces  the  national 
caused'ijif method  parties  to  Struggle  for  possession  of  each 
of  electing  u.  s.      state  legislature;  and  therefore,  as  long  as 

Senators.  °,      .  .  '  .  '     .         ,    ° 

state  and  city  functions  are  so  mixed  that 
the  legislature  takes  a  considerable  part  in  city  affairs, 
so  long  must  the  national  parties  be  interested  in  city 
matters. 

Once  the  national  parties  are  in  state  politics,  every 
question  of  local  policy  naturally  gets  under  the  wing 
of  one  national  party  or  the  other.  For  instance,  a 
liquor  law  or  a  Sunday-closing  law  has  got  to  be  carried 
out  by  the  local  police  and  magistrates;  or  an  idea  in 
education — such  as  Bible-reading  in  the  schools,  or  the 
prevention  of  truancy,  has  got  to  be  carried  out  by  the 


§  42o6]  Peculiar  American  Municipal  Difficulties.      477 

local  school  superintendents.  So  the  party  taking  up 
any  one  of  these  measures  must  not  only  control  the 
state  legislature,  to  get  its  law  enacted;  but  to  get  it 
enforced,  must  control  the  local  magistrates  and  police, 
or  superintendents  of  education.  Therefore  so  far  as 
these  officers  are  appointed  by  mayors  or  village  presi- 
dents, and  confirmed  by  city  councils  or  village  boards, 
so  far  must  the  parties  advocating  the  measures, 
struggle  for  the  election  of  those  local  functionaries. 
If  all  those  minor  local  officers  were  state  officers,  and 
mayors  and  city  councils  had  nothing  to  do  with  them, 
the  parties  advocating  measures  which  the  officers  must 
administer,  would  still  struggle  to  get  the  officers. 

But  if  they  were  state  officers,  either  they  would  be 
appointed  by  the  governor:  so  the  state  parties  need  not 
run  any  candidate  but  the  governor;  while  the  mayors 
and  city  councils,  etc.,  would  run  on  purely  local 
questions;  or  if  such  state  officers  were  not  appointed 
by  the  governor,  they  would  appear  only  in  state  elections, 
and  not  in  the  local  elections,  which  it  is  a  growing 
custom  to  hold  distinct  from  the  state  elections:  hence 
they  would  no  longer  tempt  the  national  parties  into 
nominating  and  working  in  the  local  elections. 

But  as  long  as  the  local  spoils  are  so  rich,  they  will 
be  temptation  enough  for  the  national  parties,  even  if 
the  other  temptations  were  removed.  But  certainly 
the  more  we  reduce  temptations,  the  more  we  reduce 
the  time  that  it  will  take  to  evolve  wisdom  and  honesty 
superior  to  them. 

When  our  national  party  managers  have  the  imper- 
tinence to  make  hack  nominations  for  local  offices, 
sensible  people  sometimes  make  nominations  of  their 
own.  But  then  the  party  bosses  generally  unite  to 
defeat  the  non-party  candidate.  In  the  old  days  of 
party  election-booths,  once  when  there  was  a  non- 
partisan ticket  in  the  field,  I  myself  saw  Republican 
ballots  dealt  out  from  Democratic  booths. 
420  (b).  Corrupts  '^^^^  Subordinating  of  local  questions 
both  national  and  to  statc  and  national  questions,  has  never 
local  politics.         benefited    state    and    national    questions. 


478  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  4206 

On  the  contrary,  the  mixing  of  local  and  state  politics 
with  national  politics,  has  led  the  corrupt  politicians, 
for  the  sake  of  local  spoils,  to  just  so  much  stronger 
efforts  to  control  the  national  parties.  The  practice 
works  harm  in  both  directions. 

All  the  great  reform  victories  in  the  cities  have  been 
won  by  wise  people  voting  together  in  local  matters, 
without  any  regard  for  their  national  politics. 

420  fc;.  Paradoxes  It  IS  interesting  and  variously  sugges- 
of  Democracy,  ^ive  that  of  the  three  principal  schemes 
wherein  the  founders  of  our  democratic  national  gov- 
ernment dared  not  trust  to  democracy — the  election 
of  president,  the  election  of  senators,  and  the  appoint- 
ment of  the  Supreme  Court,  one  is  a  dead  letter,  one 
a  live  evil,  and  only  one  a  success;  and  in  that  one — the 
appointment  of  the  Supreme  Court,  the  suffrage  acts  so 
remotely  that  the  voters  and  even  the  politicians  hardly 
take  the  matter  into  consideration  at  all. 

But  after  all,  must  we  wait  to  abolish  the  interference 
of  national  parties  in  local  elections,  till  every  voter  is 
intelligent  and  honest  enough  to  vote  independently  in 
local  matters,  or  until  we  can  amend  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States,  or  devise  other  machinery  to  vir- 
tually elect  senators  by  popular  vote?  Or  can  we  do 
something  toward  divorcing  local  from  national  politics 
short  of  amending  the  Constitution  or  some  parallel 
device? 
.„.-..,„    .  Professor  Goodnow  *  suggests  that  the 

421.  Civil  Service     ^  ^    ,.  -       ■    .      r  \a    -u      j-      • 

Reform  as  a  temptation  to  interfere  would  be  dimm- 

remedv.  ished    by    lessening    party    control    over 

municipal  offices,  through  increasing  the  proportion  of 
offices  filled  only  by  appointment,  and  also  those  that 
can  be  filled  only  upon  examination,  and  whose  tenure 
is  permanent  during  good  beliavior.  Long  tenure  of 
office  is  nearly  universal  in  the  cities  of  Europe,  especially 
in  the  working  staff.     A  German  burgomaster  is  a  pro- 

*  "Municipal  Problems." 


§  422]    Peculiar  American  Ahnitcipal  Difjicnlties.        479 

fessional  expert  who  generally  holds  his  place  for  life, 

except  where  one  in  a  smaller  city  makes  a  reputation 

that  leads  to  his  being  called  to  a  greater  city. 

Professor  Goodnow  also  suggests  some- 

^on^s  to  the  state,     thing  perhaps  more  easily  effected, — sepa- 

locai  functions  to      rating  State  functions  and  city  functions, 

the  locality  ^   °  .^  ,        .  ,      -'  -       .  ' 

as  far  as  possible,  ]ust  as  already  m  some 

states,  state  and  city  elections  are  separated.  This 
would  lessen  the  number  of  matters — such  as  street 
railways  and  gas  and  water  companies,  which  the 
state  legislature  can  control;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
would  take  away  from  local  administration  and  give 
directly  to  state  administration,  more  matters  of  purely 
state  policy,  such  as  the  care  of  the  defective  classes, 
including  education,  the  liquor  traffic,  the  administra- 
tion of  justice,  and  the  preservation  of  the  peace.  On 
one  side,  the  state  could  attend  entirely  to  those  things 
which  it  would  naturally  attend  to  if  there  were  no 
such  thing  as  a  city.  On  the  other  side,  the  city 
could  attend  entirely  to  those  things  which  exist  solely 
because  the  city  exists.  If  the  state  were  entirely 
rural,  and  there  were  no  local  governments,  the  state 
government  would  care  entirely,  as  it  now  does  partly, 
for  the  preservation  of  order,  the  administration  of 
justice,  and  the  care  of  the  defective  classes,  including 
the  education  of  the  immature.  When  a  city  grows 
up,  it  brings  the  new  needs  of  elaborate  laying-out  and 
paving  and  lighting  of  streets;  of  railways  on,  over  or 
under  them;  of  water-supply  and  sewerage;  of  regu- 
lation of  buildings;  et  cetera.  Let  state  and  city 
each  care  for  its  own.  City  children  have  to  be  edu- 
cated, and  city  poor  and  insane  cared  for,  as  do  country 
ones,  but  it  is  properly  a  state  function.  So  do  city 
quarrels  have  to  be  adjusted  in  court,  and  city  criminals 
restrained  and  punished,  just  as  country  ones  do,  but 
these  too  are  properly  state  functions. 

An  additional  reason  for  the  state  keeping  control 
of  all  functions  not  necessarily  a  part  of  the  evolution 
of  a  city,  is  that  corruption  grows  in  city  governments 
faster  than  in  state  governments   (417),  especially  in 


480  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  422 

things  that  do  not,  Hke  streets,  water,  etc.,  come  under 
every  citizen's  notice. 

But  that  division  is  not  quite  as  clear  as 
uca  ion.  ^^  seems.  There  is  hardly  sufficient  his- 
torical warrant  to  call  education,  for  instance,  a  state 
function — in  America  at  least,  tho  there  is  in  Prussia 
and  France,  and  (tho' only  comparatively  recently)  in 
England.  But  in  America,  local  provision  for  schools 
was  well  under  way  before  the  localities  were  consoli- 
dated into  states,  and  education  has  been  mainly  a 
local  matter  ever  since,  with  more  or  less  supervision 
and  assistance  from  the  state.  Perhaps  the  state  rela- 
tion to  it  is  growing,  at  least  in  the  development  of 
state  universities  by  the  newer  states;  and  there  are 
state  superintendents  in  several  states:  even  in  so  old 
a  state  as  New  York,  there  is  a  state  officer  called 
the  Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction,  with  very 
large  supervisory  and  advisory  powers  regarding  the 
local  schools,  and  there  is  a  strong  tendency  to  enlarge 
his  powers.  Toward  the  close  of  the  last  century,  con- 
siderable agitation  of  the  subject  was  going  on  in  New 
York,  because  of  the  usual  corruption  of  city  govern- 
ment invading  the  school  boards :  so  although  America 
began  with  local  public  education,  state  public  educa- 
tion may,  after  all,  be  the  logical  thing;  and  if  it  is, 
of  course,  evolution  tends  toward  it. 
422  (b)  Police  Policc,  again,  like  education,  have  held 

a  double  position.  In  France  and  Ger- 
many a  state  police  is  a  matter  of  course;  and  even 
in  England,  despite  the  tradition  that  strong  local 
government  is  the  very  basis  of  Anglo-Saxon  liberty, 
the  police  were  made  a  national  body  by  Sir  Robert 
Peel  (hence  the  name  "peelers")  with  great  improve- 
ment in  the  maintenance  of  order;  and  half  the  expense 
of  them  is  contributed  by  the  nation.  Massachusetts 
has  had  satisfactory  experience  in  the  same  direction, 
and  the  corruptions  in  the  cities  of  New  York  state,  as 
well  as  the  fact  that  maintenance  of  order  is  logically 
an  ancient  function  of  the  state — of  the  chief  law-making 


§  423]    Peculiar  American  Municipal  Difficulties.       481 

power,   have   led   many   thinkers   to   advocate   a   state 
police  there. 

The  administration  of  justice,  as  well  as  the  main- 
tenance of  order,  is  a  state  function  already,  but  in 
cities,  generally  only  so  far  as  concerns  the  upper 
courts.  Many  cities  have  courts  for  small  cases — 
inside  of  a  thousand  or  two  dollars,  which  are  not  part 
of  the  state  judicial  organization.  Most  judges,  even 
of  state  courts,  are  elected  in  localities,  and  the  police 
magistrates  in  the  cities  are  generally  appointed  by  the 
mayors.  It  would  probably  be  an  improvement  to 
make  them  all  state  officers.  It  might  be  difficult  for 
New  York  City,  for  instance,  to  have  its  affairs  so  largely 
administered  by  people  sent  from  Albany;  or  Chicago, 
by  people  from  Springfield;  but  the  men  need  not  be 
sent  from  the  state  capitals,  any  more  than  the  officers 
of  the  post  and  revenue  and  United  States  courts  are 
sent  from  Washington.  Their  being  state  officers  is 
merely  a  question  of  how  they  are  put  into  office,  and 
to  what  heads  they  are  responsible:  not  of  where  they 
lived  before  taking  office. 

American  local  governmenis  are  more 
fn^Lfu'^fng'^foS"^  corrupted  by  national  pohtics  than  those 
anfj^pational  of  other  advanced  nations.     In  England, 

local  nominations  by  the  national  parties, 
instead  of  being  the  rule,  are  the  rare  exception,  tho 
unfortunately  there  are  signs  of  their  increase,  largely 
depending  upon  the  fact  that  Parliament  takes  the 
place  of  our  state  legislatures  in  determining  what 
"municipal  trading"  a  city  can  undertake.  Yet  so  far, 
not  half  the  municipal  offices  are  even  contested,  and 
probably  half  the  elections  are  reelections  for  good 
service.  Here  the  parties  contest  every  election,  and 
generally  give  an  inexperienced  man  his  "turn".  In 
most  of  the  cities  of  the  continent  of  Europe,  the  sys- 
tem itself  hardly  admits  of  such  a  thing:  for  a  con- 
siderable part  of  the  municipal  legislature  is  elected  by 
special  members  of  the  community,  eminent  for  knowl- 


482  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§423 

edge  or  ability,  who  would  not  think  of  national  politics 
in  the  connection  (426  6).* 

Aside  from  the  method  of  electing  sen- 
carf'weatfh  and^"^''    ators,  there  are  other  peculiar  causes  of  po- 

good  nature  pro-  Htical  corruption  in  American  history  and 
mote  carelessness.       ,  ,  /->.  i  , 

character.  (Jur  early  government  was 

founded  "by  an  exceptional  set  of  people,  among  whom  a 
working  democracy  was  not  inconceivable.  Thus,  tho 
they  were  far  from  beginning  with  a  system  of  universal 
suffrage,  that  system  gradually  grew  up  ;  but  the  increase 
in  our  ignorant  classes  has  made  it  a  very  different  thing 
from  what  the  fathers  expected.  Moreover,  the  United 
States,  being  a  comparatively  new  and  thinly  populated 
country,  has  such  vast  masses  of  untouched  wealth  in 
its  mines,  such  vast  tracts  of  cheap  forest  and  arable 
land,  and  such  immense  opportunities  to  trade  in  the 
products  of  all  these,  that  the  people  are  all  engrossed 
in  making  money,  and  give  less  heed  than  Europeans 
must,  to  saving  it.  Tweed  said  that  'nobody  in  New 
York  would  stop  to  protect  a  dollar  from  the  politicians, 
as  long  as  he  was  left  another  dollar  to  trade  with.  His 
remark  was  something  like  the  truth.  Not  only  in 
New  York,  but  throughout  the  country  generally,  it  is 
the  disposition  of  the  people  to  neglect  their  govern- 
ments and  let  them  fall  into  the  hands  of  corrupt  men, 
and  to  carry  their  differences  on  national  questions 
into  home  politics,  until  the  taxations  and  oppressions 
become  too  heavy  to  be  borne;  then  the  people  arouse 
themselves  and  make  a  change,  and  then  gradually 
relapse  into  the  bad  ways  again. 

But  with  all  the  carelessness  of  American  cities, 
their  debts  are  not  always  larger  than  those  of  European 
cities.  But  the  European  cities  have  something  to 
show  for  their  debts  that  ours  have  not — city  ownership 
of  street  railways,  docks,  gasworks,  markets,  abattoirs, 
improved  tenements,  lodging-houses,  baths,  assembly- 

*  On  these  points  and  on  the  composition  of  European 
municipal  governing  bodies,  Shaw  is  invaluable. 


§  425]    Peculiar  American  Municipal  Difficulties.        483 

rooms  and  other  things — many  of  them,  even  the  ceme- 
teries, sources  of  income.  Our  debts  to  a  large  extent 
represent  merely  the  stealings  of  our  politicians. 

One  other  national  characteristic  that  keeps  our 
municipal  administration  poor,  is  our  proverbial  good 
nature.  We  do  not  "kick"  enough.  So  wise  a  man 
as  Herbert  Spencer  blamed  us  for  this.  Perhaps  we 
are  so  sure  of  our  more  important  rights,  that  we  are 
careless  about  mere  conveniences.  If  we  would  make 
it  a  duty  to  complain  of  cars  not  stopping,  or  being 
overcrowded,  and  of  sanitary  violations,  etc.,  we  would 
make  a  vast  improvement.  A  poor  fellow  in  a  tenement- 
house  might  get  himself  into  trouble  if  he  complained 
of  his  landlord,  but  in  Paris  for  instance,  the  health 
authorities  invite  all  people  to  mail  them  ttnsigncd 
complaints. 

Even  if  our  capaVjle  people  were  less  careless  of 
their  political  duties,  there  may  not  be  enough  such 
people  to  make  much  direct  difference,  but  they  could 
effect  considerable  through  watchfulness  and  influence, 
tho  perhaps  not  through  votes:  for  the  ignorant  are 
more  and  more  crowding  into  the  cities, 
425.  Corruption  of  especially  seaport  cities ;  and  in  New  York 

voters  under  the  >    i         -     m  •  ■        ^   ^ 

guise  of  charit)'.  at  least,  iammany  is  organized  to  corrupt 
them  by  charity,  on  the  old  plan  of  "bread 
and  circuses"  that  helped  destroy  Rome.  It  has  an 
agent  in  every  district  where  the  poor  crowd,  whose 
function  it  is  to  befriend  them  in  all  possible  ways. 

That  may  be  a  good  use  to  make  of  the  spoils,  but 
only  a  small  portion  of  them  go  that  way.  It  is  simply 
a  plan  to  use  up  a  little  in  order  to  get  more.  The 
reform  element  really  spends  vastly  more  money  for 
the  benefit  of  the  poor,  than  the  political  organizations 
do — all  the  vast  charities  of  the  cities  are  supported 
by  people  who  generally  vote  against  the  corrupt 
machines.  But  that  fact  is  not  felt  by  the  poor  man: 
the  charity  of  the  political  machine  comes  to  him  in 
the  name  of  the  machine,  and  what  is  of  perhaps  even 


484  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  425 

more  consequence,  it  conies  through  a  jolly  sympa- 
thetic neighbor  of  his  own  class,  who  knows  him  person- 
ally and  drops  in  at  his  home.  The  great  charitable 
institutions  naturally  render  their  services  in  a  more 
or  less  routine  way,  through  strangers,  and  from  offices 
more  or  less  remote. 

The  people  who  actually  support  the  real  charities, 
might  use  a  part  of  their  funds  as  Tammany  uses  a  part 
of  its  funds.  But  they  do  not  do  it,  partly  because 
they  are  too  busy  making  niore  funds,  but  mainly 
because,  after  all,  it  is  not  honest  to  work  politics 
under  the  mask  of  charity.  They  are,  however,  in 
manv  cities,  carrying  their  benevolence  and  educating 
influence  right  home  to  the  poor  through  the  various 
"settlements"  started  by  the  universities,  and  now 
taken  up  by  many  other  agencies. 

42P.  Non-taxpay-  There  can  be  no  reason  or  justice  in 
ers  voting  permitting  people  who  do  not  pay  taxes  to 

vote  away  the  property  of  those  who  do.  In  the  Euro- 
pean cities,  however  wide  the  suffrage  may  be  in 
national  matters,  probably  not  half  the  men  vote  for 
city  officers.  In  Great  Britain,  the  Low  Countries, 
Germany,  Austro-Hungary  and  Itah^  such  an  absurdity 
as  universal  suffrage  for  city  officers  is  unknown  (except 
in  the  comparatively  rare  cases  where  a  non-taxpayer's 
educational  qualification  prevents  his  voting  being 
absurd) ;  and  it  is  in  those  countries  that  cities  are  best 
and  most  fully  developed,  and  do  most  for  the  health 
and  happiness  of  the  very  people  who  are  not  permitted 
to  vote.  The  remarkable  showing  already  quoted  for 
Jacksonville,  Florida,  has  been  effected  only  under  the 
Australian  ballot,  which  virtually  imposes  an  educa- 
tional qualification.  That  fact  is  full  of  meaning  re- 
garding whatever  favorable  showing  may  have  been 
made  in  Australia  itself.  Even  in  the  villages  of  New 
York  state,  and  in  Texas  at  least,  nobody  can  put  a 
locality  in  debt  for  public  improvements,  without  a 
vote  of  the  taxpayers.  It  is  the  older  practice,  indeed, 
to   have  improvements   voted   only   by  taxpayers.     It 


§426c]  Peculiar  American  Municipal  Difficulties.       485 

looks  as  if  the  other  practice  had  been  worked  into 
existence,  as  cities  increased,  by  the  pohticians  expect- 
ing to  secure  the  spoils  of  the  cities  through  the  care- 
less votes  of  those  who  have  nothing  at  stake. 

But  there  is  a  reason,  tho  not  necessarily  a  good  one, 
why  the  practice  of  the  New  York  and  Texas  villages 
cannot  be  carried  into  the  cities:  the  taxpayers  of 
the  towns  and  villages  can  easily  vote  on  each  appro- 
priation, like  officers'  salaries  and  ordinary  running 
expenses,  that  is  not  a  mere  matter  of  routine;  but 
it  would  certainly  be  much  more  difficult  to  have  that 
done  in  the  more  complex  improvement  of  the  cities. 
A  very  authoritative  substitute  was  proposed  in  1875 
426  (a)  Tiiden  ^^  ^  Very  eminent  commission  appointed 
Commission's  pro-  by  Govemor  Tildcn  of  New  York.  It 
pose  reme  y.  reported  in  favor  of  each  city  having  a 
Board  of  Finance  to  be  elected  by  taxpayers  alone, 
who  should  regulate  all  expenditures.  But  reasonable 
and  ingenious  as  the  measure  was,  it  could  not  be 
carried.  Of  course  the  politicians  did  not  want  it: 
it  would  spoil  their  trade:  so  they  raised  the  cry  that 
it  was  against  universal  suffrage.  It  was  against  the 
absurdities  of  universal  suffrage,  of  course,  but  not 
against  its  legitimate  claims.  Those  claims  are  sim- 
426  (b)  Local  P^y  ihsit  every  man  shall  vote  for  the 
suffrage  rights       officcrs  wlio  protcct  his   life,   liberty  and 

differ  from  ottiers.    i-.-„.  -^ri  •  -ri- 

legitimate  pursuit  of  happiness.  Paying 
the  officers  who  attend  to  conveniences,  and  deciding 
upon  spending  money  on  them,  are  other  matters,  which 
can  be  vastly  more  safely  and  reasonably  left  to  those 
who  must  do  the  paying,  and  who  therefore  have  proved 
that  they  can  handle  money  wisely.  If  such  matters 
were  so  left,  the  poorer  man  would  be  all  the  surer  of 
good  officers  to  protect  the  other  set  of  rights  which 
are  as  much  his  as  anybody's. 

This  is  the  plan  in  the  cities  which  lead 

local  suffrage  fn      the  world  in  administration,  convenience 

%'tie!!''^°"^''"^''-    ^^^  care  for  their  poor— in  Great  Britain. 

Germany,     Austro -Hungary     and     Italy. 

^  Even  taking  the  extreme  view  that  a  city  should  be 


486  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§426c 

largely  a  charitable  institution,  it  is  not  very  sound 
policy  to  let  a  charity  institution  be  run  by  tlie  bene- 
ficiaries.* 

As  to  France,  those  who  know  Paris  under  universal 
suffrage,  and  knew  it  before,  say  that  it  has  deteriorated. 
In  Germany,  Prussia  lets  only  taxpayers  vote  for  city 
councillors,  and  (as  is  quite  generally  the  case  in  Europe) 
the  councillors  elect  the  executive  officers — ^burgomaster, 
etc.  The  suffrage  arrangement  by  no  means  ends  with 
letting  only  taxpayers  vote.  A  graded  list  of  tax- 
payers is  made,  beginning  with'  the  one  who  pays  most. 
Those  who  pay  the  first  third  of  the  taxes,  elect  one 
third  of  the  council,  and  those  who  pay  the  second  and 
the  third  thirds  of  the  taxes,  respectively  elect  the  other 
two  thirds  of  the  council.  Taking  Berlin's  election  of 
'93  as  an  illustration,  the  three  portions  of  the  council 
were  elected  respectively  by  2  per  cent.,  11  per  cent.,  and 
87  per  cent,  of  the  taxpayers.  As  an  indication  of  the 
faithfulness  of  these  respective  classes  of  taxpayers  to 
their  civic  duties,  of  the  wealthiest  class,  46  per  cent, 
went  to  the  polls;    of  the  middle  class,  37  per  cent.; 

*  The  following  extract  from  Collier's  is  worth  quoting : 
"  '  Idiots  Vote  in  New  York.'  This  is  no  joke.  It  is  an 
illustration  of  the  importance  of  ballot  forms.  The  feeble- 
minded, who  could  not  manage  a  Massachusetts  ballot  at  all, 
are  as  good  as  anybody  in  New  York.  In  iqoo,  when  McKinley 
and  Roosevelt  were  the  Republican  nominees,  we  happened  to 
enter  into  conversation  with  an  idiot  friend,  who  may  as  well 
bear  the  name  of  Jerry.  Handing-him  a  sample  ballot,  we  asked 
him  how  he  intended  to  cast  his  vote.  He  made  a  cross  under 
the  eagle,  and,  in  spite  of  attempts  to  confuse  him,  insisted 
that  he  was  voting  the  Republican  ticket.  'Who  is  rttnning  on 
that  ticket?'  we  next  inquired.  'Teddy  and  Matinny ' 
(McKinley),  he  replied.  'What  is  Teddy  rimning  for?'  'Oh, 
Teddy,  he  run  for  President.'  'And  what  is  McKinley  running 
for?'  Jerry  thought  a  moment.  'Matinny  rimning  for  mayor, 
ain't  he?'  Continuing  our  instructive  intercourse,  we  asked 
him  if  he  approved  of  trusts.  He  did,  and  we  asked  then  what 
he  understood  by  trusts.  Jerry  smiled.  'When  you  go  to  the 
store,  you  get  trusted,'  he  replied.  Jerry,  in  our  opinion,  is  in 
many  respects  a  typical  New  York  elector — an  extreme  case, 
perhaps,  but  illuminating.  Should  the  ballot  not  be  arranged 
to  meet  the  requirements  of  a  somewhat  more  intricate  intelli- 
gence?" » 


§426e']    Peculiar  American  Municipal  Difficulties.     487 

and  of  the  poorest  class,  but  26  per  cent.  To  be  fair,  it 
may  be  probable  that  the  less  wealthy  classes  were  so 
poorly  represented  because  they  felt  their  influence  was 
so  slight.  But  if  so,  they  would  do  well  to  meditate  the 
parable  of  the  talents.  To  be  equally  fair,  it  is  possible 
that  they  stayed  away  because  they  are  not  as  capable 
as  more  able  men,  of  appreciating  the  reasons  for  going. 
That  arrangement  is  not  restricted  to  the  Prussian 
cities .  Vienna  has  something  like  it ,  but  it  is  not  popular 
— at  least  among  people  who  want  to  spend  other 
people's  money. 

The  actual  experience  of  having  the  non- 
426  (d).  Where  taxpayer  vote  regarding  city  expenses ,  is 
^besttahen^careof.  that  SO  far  from  the  non-taxpaycrs'  votes 
beinj  necessary  to  secure  them  proper 
accommodations  in  cities,  there  is  no  sort  of  question  that 
throughout  the  civilized  world  they  get  best  accommoda- 
tions— education,  parks,  baths,  gymnasiums,  concerts, 
where  they  have  fewest  votes;  and  where  they  have 
most  votes,  they  elect  most  people  who  steal  the  money 
that  ought  to  be  devoted  to  the  voters'  benefit,  and 
alienate  moneyed  people  from  city  improvement. 
As  between  the  leading  cities  of  the  leading  nations, 
which,  at  the  beginning  of  the  century,  spent  most 
money  per  citizen,  those  where  suffrage  was  universal — 
Paris  and  New  York,  each  spent  more  than  London, 
Berlin  or  Vienna.  But  in  the  last  three,  unquestionably 
the  people  were  best  taken  care  of.  The  money,  then, 
must  have  been  stolen  by  officers  elected  by  voters 
unfit  to  exercise  the  suffrage. 

Yet  there  seems  small  chance  in  our 
canon'fy  improue  couutry  of  taking  the  suffrage  away  from 
thaUil'cZir'di^!^  *h^  ignorant  and  shiftless  for  their  own 
good — not  as  much  perhaps  as  there  is 
of  curing  their  ignorance  and  shiftlessness.  Those  at 
least  are  things  that  anybody  can  begin  on  any  day, 
and  it  is  hard  to  tell  how  to  raise  the  suffrage  tests. 

Our  need   of   easy  ways   of  getting  good   men   into 
office  is  almost  equalled  by  our  need  of  easy  ways  to 


488  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  4265 

get  bad  men  out.  A  promising  one  has  lately  been 
introduced  in  Los  Angeles,  and  is  under  consideration 
elsewhere.  Under  it,  any  elective  municipal  officer 
may  be  removed,  and  an  election  held  for  a  successor, 
upon  a  petition  containing  verified  signatures  and 
addresses  of  a  quarter  as  many  citizens  as  voted  for 
him.  A  similar  law  is  now  under  agitation  in  New 
Jersey. 

This  long  history  seems  to  prove  what  we  had  already 
reasoned  out  on  general  principles — that  in  America, 
at  least,  we  woiild  better  move  very  cautiously  in 
increasing  our  kinds  of  public  work.  Public  works 
are  the  great  source  of  public  spoils.  If  we  were  to  try 
to  have  at  public  expense  all  the  good  things  that  the 
best  European  cities  have,  we  should  simply  succeed 
in  throwing  more  food  to  political  corruption,  and  thus 
to  a  large  extent  spending  our  money  without  getting 
what  we  spent  it  for. 

If  all  good  citizens  were  alive  to  their  political 
duties,  those  duties  would  not  demand  much  care  on 
the  part  of  each.  The  community  would  then  be  pretty 
sure  to  take  the  ounce  of  preventive  where  it  now  has 
to  pay  for  the  pound  of  cure ;  and  it  would  moreover  be 
saved  the  heavy  taxation  between  the  times  when  the 
preventive  ought  to  have  been  applied,  and  the  times 
when  the  cure  must  be. 

427.  Universal  It  mav  reasonablvbe  noted  here  that  the 

iii'ef  iniifS  advocates  of  universal  suffrage  must  logic- 
ism.  ally  be  advocates  of  laissez-faire.     Those 

who  claim  that  a  given  man  is  able  to  take  care  of  the 
state,  cannot  logically  claim  that  he  needs  the  state  to 
take  care  of  him.  If  he  is  unfit  to  take  care  of  himself, 
he  must,  in  all  reason,  be  unfit  to  take  care  of  the  state. 
Yet  logical  sequences  can  only  follow  one  line  of  factors, 
and  there  may  be  in  the  situation  many  other  factors. 
When  the  general  line  of  motion  of  a  stone  or  a  solar 
system  is  once  determined,  to  get  the  exact  line,  many 
contributing  factors  must  be  investigated.  Yet  general 
principles — those  that  hold  "other  things  even" — are 


§427]    Peculiar  American  Mvinicipal  DifjlcuUies.        489 

constantly  of  value  in  general  reasoning.  And  this 
general  idea  of  the  logical  relations  of  democracy  and 
laissez-faire  may  often  serve  to  guide  one's  opinions 
regarding  democracy,  or  regarding  laissez-faire.  If  you 
want  government  to  perform  a  wide  range  of  difficult 
tasks,  let  stupidity  have  as  little  to  do  with  govern- 
ment as  possible.  If  you  want  stupidity  to  have  a 
large  control  in  government,  give  government  an  in- 
versely small  range  of  duties. 


CHAPTER   XXXII. 

RECREATIONS  AND  OTHER  HELP  TO  THE  LESS  FORTUNATE 
CAPABLE. 

428,  Museums  and  Now  to  leave  mere  "practical"  conve- 
Libraries.  niences,  and  turn  to  agencies  of  recreation 

and  help.  So  far  as  municipalities  provide  them,  they 
are  of  course  subject  to  the  difficulties  alread}''  in- 
dicated ;  but  in  some  countries  where  universal  suffrage 
has  not  yet  been  the  rule  long  enough  to  "get  in  its 
fine  work",  government  manages  museums  and  libraries 
very  well.  In  Germany,  government  even  runs  the 
theatres  well;  but  in  France  under  the  Republic,  the 
Paris  opera  has  become  a  good  deal  of  a  botch,  despite 
government  patronage. 

In  America,  these  things  generally  have  been  kept  as 
far  away  from  universal  suffrage  as  possible.  The  offi- 
cials for  museums  and  libraries  are  nowhere  elected,  tho 
in  many  places  appointed  by  the  mayors.  The  great 
museums  in  New  York,  however,  are,  fortunately,  pri- 
vate corporations ;  and  so  with  the  great  library  bene- 
factions of  Astor,  Lenox  and  Tilden;  yet  the  city  pro- 
vides the  buildings  for  nearly  all.  So  too,  in  other 
cities,  most  of  the  great  benefactions  of  Peabody  and 
Carnegie  and  their  like  are  in  the  hands  of  private 
trustees.  That  rule  has  not  been  universal,  however: 
in  Boston,  for  instance,  the  Public  Library,  tho  under 
city  control,  has  been  a  brilliant  success.  But  Boston's 
interest  in  library  matters  is  almost  unique. 

As   to  parks:   our  good  German  fellow 

'    ^^  ^'  citizens  have  plenty  of  private  ones,  for 

picnicking  and  dancing  and  concerts,  but  private  enter- 

490 


§43°]  Recreations  and  Assistance.  491 

prise  never  did  create  a  large  one :  all  the  private  ones 
in  New  York  could  be  lost  in  a  corner  of  Central  Park, 
not  to  speak  of  the  newer  public  parks;  and  the  same 
is  true  of  the  ratio  of  private  parks  to  public  parks 
elsewhere.  Land  for  large  parks  cannot  well  be  had 
without  eminent  domain:  so  they  must  be  government 
institutions. 

In  Europe,  parks  have  generally  been  well  managed. 
So  they  have  in  Boston  and  a  few  more  of  our  cities. 
In  New  York  it  has  been  a  constant,  and  not  always 
successful,  fight  to  keep  ignorance  and  corruption  from 
injviring  them;  and  much  similar  experience  has  been 
had  elsewhere  in  America. 

The  best  way  yet  devised  to  take  care  of  them  is 
by  putting  them  under  commissions  to  be  selected, 
directly  or  indirectly,  by  artists,  architects,  engineers 
and  other  competent  persons  outside  of  politics.  In 
New  York,  there  has  lately  been  great  improvement 
made  by  having  the  artistic  and  engineering  and  Natural 
History  societies  appoint  some  of  the  park  officers. 
There  is  also  a  Fine  Art  Commission  appointed  by  the 
mayor,  whose  advice  is  often  sought,  and  who  can  veto 
the  designs  and  sites  for  public  structures  selected  by 
the  other  bodies.  This  heads  off  »the  ignorance  of  the 
sort  of  managers  dependent  on  universal  suffrage. 

There  is  a  strong  economic  argument  for  abundance 
of  parks.  It  has  gradually  become  plain  that  large 
tracts,  especially  city  slums,  can  be  taken  and,  with 
good  management,  partly  turned  into  parks  and  boule- 
vards, and  the  whole  expense  paid  by  selling  off  the 
rest  for  building-sites.  This  has  been  done  in  many 
cities,  especially  in  Europe. 

430.  Clearing  Improving   the   dwellings   of   the   poor, 

^'""^5.  however,  has  not  been  done  solely  in  this 

way.  In  most  of  the  leading  European  cities,  and  a 
few  American  ones,  the  miserable,  crowded,  tumble- 
down, fire-trap  quarters  have  been  cleaned  out,  better 
streets  put  in,  and  healthier  and  safer  houses  put  up, 
often  with  a  profit  on  the  whole  transaction.  Private 
enterprise  also  has  generally  gone  in  and  put  up  better 


492  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  430 

buildings,  tho  very  frequently  they  have  been  business 
buildings  rather  than  better  lodgings  for  the  poor;  and 
therefore  the  poor  have,  to  a  considerable  extent,  been 
merely  driven  to  other  slums.  Yet  certain  it  is  that 
if  the  very  worst  slum  is  cleaned  out,  its  occupants 
will  be  forced  to  one  less  bad,  and  their  habits  will 
receive  at  least  a  temporary  improvement.  In  America, 
little  more  in  this  way  has  been  done  by  municipal 
governments  than  occasionally  putting  a  new  broad 
sunny  street  through  a  slum,  or  widening  an  old  street 
in  it.  There  has  lately,  however,  been  a  great  increase 
in  plans  for  such  improvements. 

Plainly,  such  work  cannot  be  left  to  private  compe- 
tition: while  it  would  be  possible  for  individuals  or 
private  corporations  to  rebuild  all  the  houses  they  could 
get  possession  of,  possession  of  an  entire  district  for 
the  purpose  of  rearranging  streets,  would  be  impossible. 
Land  for  a  new  street  is  virtually  a  natural  monopoly: 
for  some  of  the  owners  of  houses,  hoping  to  benefit  by 
improvement,  or  for  other  reasons,  are  sure  to  hold 
on  to  their  own  against  every  power  less  than  govern- 
430  (a)  Possible  1^6^^.  Therefore  under  all  ordinary  cir- 
oniy  under  eminent  cumstanccs,  nothing  Can  make  such  im- 
omain.  provemcnts  properly  and  thoroughly  but 

the  one  thing  that  can  control  a  natural  monopoly — 
eminent  domain. 

Too  often,  generally  perhaps,  such  im- 
provements in  America  have  been  political 
jobs:  the  politicians  have,  in  advance,  bought  up  the 
property  to  be  benefited,  often  below  its  value,  at  rates 
established  by  themselves  under  eminent  domain;  and 
then  on  getting  possession,  they  have  sometimes  turned 
around  and  got  new  valuations  for  damages,  and  col- 
lected them  from  the  municipal  treasury.  On  the 
whole,  the  schemes  have,  with  us,  too  often  been  mere 
wholesale  robberies  of  property-holders  by  the  politi- 
cians, with  some  half-way  advantage  to  the  poor,  and 
some  incidental  advantage  to  the  community  in  general. 
European  experience  in  the  same  lines  has  been  that, 
as    a   rule,    street-openings    have    not    been    attended 


§  43°]  Recreations  and  Assistance.  493 

with  as  much  corruption  as  here,  the  there  was  a 
remarkable  exception  when  Napoleon  III.  made  over 
Paris. 

430  (c).  The  nega-  Something  has  been  done  by  way  of 
tive  side.  liousing  the  poor  in  several  of  the  British 

cities,  Glasgow  having  taken  the  lead ;  and  somewhat  less 
in  Germany  and  France.  There  has  been  an  improve- 
ment in  health  and  character,  and  those  who  favor 
"municipal  trading"  claim  that,  on  the  whole,  the 
buildings  return  a  fair  interest  on  the  money  invested. 

So  much  for  the  positive  side.  On  the  negative 
one,  it  is  admitted  that  in  Glasgow  itself  the  houses 
do  not  quite  return  their  interest,  and  that  in  London 
more  people  are  driven  out  of  the  old  buildings  than 
the  new  ones  can  accommodate,  and  forced  into  quarters 
worse  than  the  old.  The  new  buildings  are  really 
fitted  for  a  higher  order  of  tenants,  and  some  of  them 
who  would  pay  more  than  the  rates  charged,  are  actu- 
ally crowded  away.  In  other  words,  the  enterprise  has 
been  made  a  charitable  one  rather  than  a  business  one, 
and  that,  to  the  detriment  of  those  dispossessed  to 
make  room,  for  the  new  buildings.  Private  builders 
have  stopped  making  accommodations  for  the  poor: 
they  will  not  compete  with  government  charity:  so,  it 
is  claimed,  the  very  poor  are  worse  off  than  ever.  As 
to  the  sanitary  and  political  aspects  of  the  case,  now 
the  landlord — the  municipality,  is  his  own  sanitary 
supervisor — nobody  else  to  watch  him;  and  his  reelec-" 
tion  depends  on  his  own  tenants:  so  he  is  not  apt  to  be 
very  rigid  with  them. 

In  face  of  the  European  experiences,  we  seem  still 
less  ready  for  success,  at  least  in  many  of  our  large  cities 
where  it  is  most  needed.  In  them,  and  in  many  of  the 
small  ones  too,  the  government  is  so  corrupt  that  the 
less  it  has  to  do,  the  better.  Moreover,  in  house-building 
at  least,  tho  not  in  street-opening,  there  is  room  for 
infinite  competition. 

For  Boston,  the  legislature  has  recently  voted  build- 
ings for  the  poor  that  must  have  so  many  good  qualities 
that  the  poor  cannot  pay  the  necessary  rent ;  and  building 


494  ^^^^  Promotion  of  Convcniaicc.  [§  430 

for  them  was  at  a  standstill  in  the  latter  part  of  the  cen- 
>ion /w>  c  tury.     In  New  York,  Mr.  Gould's  company 

430  W- Success  /  '  •  j    j  .  i 

under  private  and  some  smaller  ones  have  provided  vastly 
enterprise.  improved  houses   at  a  reasonable  profit, 

both  in  town  and  in  the  suburbs,  and  are  having  very 
great  and  growing  success.  Some,  however,  have  done 
it  at  a  loss ;  and  at  least  one  who  offered  a  special  private 
entrance  to  each  apai-tment,  found  that  the  people 
preferred  the  sociability  of  the  old  common  halls,  despite 
its  evil  features.  The  use  of  bathtubs  for  coal-bins  has 
become  one  of  the  standard  humors  of  the  subject. 

431.  Housing  the  ^ut  some  American  local  governments 
poor.  have  done  something  more  directly  for  the 
housing  of  the  poor,  than  taking  property  by  eminent 
domain — especially  in  New  York,  where  the  conditions 
are  worst,  a  good  many  laws  have  been  enforced  toward 
securing  from  the  landlord,  proper  light,  ventilation, 
drainage,  and  safety  from  fire. 

Some  objection  has  been  raised  to  this  work  on  the 
ground  that  it  was  interfering  with  liberty  of  contract. 
Light,  ventilation,  drainage  and  safety  all  cost  money: 
if  a  man  wants  to  hire  a  cheaper  place  without  them, 
why,  it  has  been  asked,  interfere  with  his  liberty  to  do 
,0. .,/,         •*   so?         Liberty,    Hke    every    other    good 

431  (a).  Community  ■.        "  .  j.  ivT 

should  regulate  It  thing,  can  be  ruu  to  an  extreme.  JNo  man 
in  self-defence.  gj^Q^^^j  ^c  at  liberty  to  build  or  occupy  a 
house  which  may  start  a  pestilence  through  the  whole 
community.  If  a  man  is  vSO  poor  that  he  cannot  afford 
to  live  in  a  better  one,  and  if  he  will  not  leave  the 
city  (64  a,  646),  it  will  be  better  for  him,  and  cheaper 
for  the  community,  for  it  to  exercise  its  rights  of 
self-defence,  and  put  him  in  the  poorhouse  at  once. 
The  conclusion  on  the  whole  matter  seems  to  be  that 
in  America,  at  least,  the  government  would  best  require 
good  sanitary  conditions,  and  leave  the  rest  to  private 
enterprise  and  philanthropy. 

,^,  „        ,  We    have  but   few  good  public   baths, 

432,  Personal  con-        ,  -,      ,,  ^      ^^  -. 

veniences,  army  while  they  and  other  sanitary  conveniences 
outfitting,  etc.         -^  "f^iiropean  cities  are  far  in  advance  of 


§  433]  Recreations  and  Assistance.  495 

ours.  Some  European  cities  have  provided  public  wash- 
houses  for  laundry  work,  and  Glasgow  has  even  taken 
in  washing,  because  the  women  did  not  use  the  public 
wash-houses  enough  to  make  them  profitable.  In  view 
of  this,  with  their  usual  consistency,  the  socialists  who 
have  wanted  the  government  to  do  everything,  are 
objecting  because  government  competes  with  the 
washerwomen. 

We  come  now  to  another  class  of  government  func- 
tions, and  one  whose  appropriateness  for  government 
there  is,  probably,  less  dispute  about.  Until  we  reached 
the  question  of  clearing  out  the  slums,  we  had  touched 
only  matters  in  which  the  whole  community  is  directly 
interested — questions  of  convenience  that  come  home 
direct  to  almost  every  man,  and  where,  as  a  rule,  people 
can  help  themselves.  But  in  the  worst  slums,  we  struck 
for  the  first  time  the  class  of  people  that  need  help.  We 
have  already  admitted  that  everybody  is  interested  in 
having  city  pest-holes  cleared  out.  Similarly,  every- 
body must  be  interested  in  having  all  those  helped  who 
need  help ;  so  that  (to  put  it  on  the  lowest  ground)  they 

.-„  p  .    shall  not  spread  disease  and  be  led  into 

433.  Economy  and  .  ^      ^        .      .       ,.^  y,    .        . 

civilization  both  pauperism  and  criminality,  it  is  cheaper 
require  charity,  ^^  ^^^^  people  helped  to  help  themselves, 
than  to  increase  the  sanitary  force,  police  force,  and 
hospitals  and  courts  and  jails. 

We  have  seen  before,  for  that  matter  (336),  that 
civilization  apparently  depends  upon  the  burdens  of  the 
unfortunate  being  borne  by  somebody  else.  Now  shall 
they  be  borne  by  more  able  people,  as  individuals,  or  by 
the  state?  At  first  sight,  it  seems  as  broad  as  it  is 
long:  for  as  the  able  people  pay  the  taxes,  it  seems  to 
make  no  difference  whether  they  give  the  money  direct 
or  through  the  state.  But  it  does  make  a  difference — 
all  the  difference  in  the  world,  and  for  at  least  three 
433  (a\  preferably  good  reasons.  The  state  does  its  coarsest 
from  indiuiduats.  ^ork  but  poorly,  and  its  finest  work — 
the  care  of  its  unfortunates  and  defectives,  it  does 
abominably.     Therefore  the  less  of  that  work  that  it 


496  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  433  a 

has  to  do,  and  the  more  of  that  work  that  can  be  done 
by  the  exceptional  men  and  women  of  the  able  classes, 
the  better. 

It  may  well  be  asked:  why  should  not  government 
do  the  work  by  calling  these  exceptional  people  in  to 
administer  its  charities  and  education  ?  But  too 
often  in  America  it  zvill  not:  for  the  reasons  already 
given  time  and  again.  In  America  what  little  decent 
management  of  government  charities  there  is,  is  either 
undertaken,  as  in  Massachusetts,  by  state  officials 
working  without  pay  (who  are  very  hard  to  get),  or  is 
forced  on  paid  officials  by  the  criticisms  and  aid  of 
volunteer  private  associations  like  the  New  York  Chari- 
ties Aid  Society.  In  the  leading  cities  of  Europe, 
as  a  rule,  the  best  people  are  called  in  by  the  govern- 
ments, and  in  large  numbers,  to  administer  the  chari- 
ties. But  those  cities,  outside  of  France,  are  not  under 
universal  suffrage;  and  France  has  not  yet  got  very 
far  into  the  habits  tiniversal  municipal  suffrage  breeds. 

The  second  reason  why  government  is  unfit  for  the 
work  is  that  the  tendency  of  government  administra- 
tion is  to  run  into  socialism,  communism  and  all  other 
forms  of  robbery  of  the  minority  by  the  majority. 

The  third  reason  is  the  killing  of  the  spirit  of  spon- 
taneous individual  sympathy,  from  which,  as  is  abun- 
dantly proved,  and  with  increasing  clearness  every  day, 
more  is  to  be  expected  than  is  possible  from  govern- 
ment charity. 

Nevertheless,  the  most  aid  to  the  needy  is  supplied  by 
the  most  advanced  governments.  As  civilization  begins, 
none  of  its  conveniences  are  supplied  by  the  govern- 
ment: the  government  attends  only  to  defence  and 
justice,  "and  precious  little  of  that."  In  mediaeval 
434.  Hospitals  and  Europe,  schools  and  hospitals  were  first 
a^y'""^^.  supplied  exclusively  by  the  churches,  and 

are  in  Turkey  to-day;  and  in  Catholic  countries,  except 
perhaps  Austria,  there  is  now  a  larger  proportion  of 
them  supplied  by  the  churches  than  in  Germany, 
England  and  America. 

In   Protestant   countries,   schools   and   hospitals   are 


§  43 6j  Recreations  and  Assistance.  497 

supplied  both  by  private  beneficence  and  by  govern- 
ment. 

The  ideal  principle  seems  to  be  that  government, 
which  is  the  affair  of  all,  should  not  undertake  anything 
not  needed  by  all.  But  we  do  not  all  use  hospitals 
and  asylums,  and  certainly  not  jails,  and  yet  we  all 
need  that  they  should  exist:  so  if  private  enterprise 
does  not  supply  them,  we  have  to  depend  on  govern- 
ment. 

Regarding  hospitals  and  asylums,  it  will  not  do  to 
say  too  confidently  whether  government's  share  in 
them  is  increasing  or  decreasing.  It  seems  most  probable 
that  in  America,  private  gifts  and  bequests  for  them 
are  gradually  moving  government's  activity  more  and 
more  into  the  background.  In  Europe,  especially  in 
Great  Britain,  the  cities  have  lately  been  very  active  in 
improving  them,  and  placing  them  in  beautiful  grounds. 

In  Edinburgh,  at  the  time  of  writing,  there  are  not 
enough  patients  to  fill  the  hospitals. 

In  Glasgow,  the}^  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  provide 
a  municipal  boarding-house  for  families  whose  homes 
have  to  be  disinfected  after  sickness. 

435.  Relief  to  Indi-  Rehef  for  the  poor  has  followed  the  same 
vidual  Poor.  course  as  the  hospitals  and  asylums.  Pri- 
vate beneficence  is  sparing  government  much  need  of 
increasing  its  activity  in  poor  relief;  and  what  is  better 
siill,  various  private  organizations  for  helping  people 
to  help  themselves,  are  even  reducing  the  numbers  of 
the  poor,  by  turning  them  into  the  well-to-do,  so  redu- 
cing the  need  of  government  care  of  them. 

There  is  a  peculiar  situation  in  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland.  The  poor-law  boards  are  not  strictly  part 
of  the  government,  but  are  elected  separately,  and 
administer  funds  which  are  supplied  both  by  govern- 
ment and  private  benevolence. 

,^r-  vy      L  Pawnshops    throughout    the    continent 

436,  Pawnshops,  r    t^  n  ,     ■ 

of   Europe,  are  generally  government  in- 
stitutions.    In  England  and  America  they  have  been 


498  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  436 

conducted  merely  as  private  businesses  until,  about 
1895,  the  "Provident  Loan  vSociety",  a  purely  philan- 
thropic organization,  was  started  in  New  York  to  serve 
the  poor  cheaper  than  the  pawnbrokers  did ;  and  it  has 
grown  rapidly,  and  similar  schemes  are  springing  up. 

The  arguments  for  government  pawnshops  are  that 
they  do  not  make  extortionate  charges,  and  are  a 
great    aid    to    the    police    in    tracing   stolen   property. 

.„_  g  ,  ,  ,  Governments  providing  pawnshops  have, 
'  with  the  exception  of  Belgium  and  Hol- 
land, also  provided  savings-banks — in  fact,  the  banks 
have  been  to  some  extent  evolutions  from  the  pawn- 
shops, and  in  many  countries  are  still  connected  with 
them.  Oddly  enough,  paternal  Germany  has  no  Postal 
Savings-Bank,  while  all  the  other  civilized  European 
nations,  have,  except  Switzerland.  We  have  not,  but 
we  seemed  on  the  brink  of  starting  one  about  the 
beginning  of  the  century. 

In  England  and  America,  pawnshops  and  savings- 
banks  are  both  private,  except  the  English  Postal 
Savings-Bank.  In  countries  where  both  are  private, 
there  is  a  very  great  difference  in  the  character  of  the 
two — greater  in  America,  perhaps,  than  elsewhere. 
Here  the  pawnshops  (except  those  of  the  Provident 
Loan  Societies)  are  not  prominent  features  in  anv  way, 
while  the  savings-banks  are  among  the  great  institutions. 

438.  Lodging-  -^.s  to  lodging-houses,   had  it  not  been 

*i°"ses.  for   the   recent   boom   in    British   munici- 

palization— which  is  showing  startling  symptoms  of 
collapse  (400  b,  h,  414  a,  b) — it  would  have  been  true 
that,  as  with  pawnshops  and  savings-banks,  lodging- 
houses  also  have  been  most  freely  provided  by  those 
governments,  German}^  at  the  head,  which  try  to  have 
toward  the  people  a  father's  relation,  of  beneficence  as 
well  as  of  control.  Republican  France  has  fewer  than 
Germany,  and  most  of  them  are  partly  supported  from 
private  funds.  In  this  regard  Great  Britain  has  been 
doing  much  to  surpass  the  Continent.      Glasgow  has 


§  439]  Recreations  and  Assistance.  499 

the  lead.  She  not  only  provides  separate  lodging-houses 
for  men  and  women,  but  even  has  one  for  families  (434). 
A  small  charge  is  made,  and  it  pays  a  good  interest 
on  the  investment.  In  America,  homeless  wanderers 
are  permitted  to  sleep  in  the  police-stations,  but  lately 
our  people,  whose  habit  it  is,  beyond  that  of  all  other 
peoples,  to  help  the  unfortunate  to  help  themselves — 
and  make  the  shiftless  do  it,  have  begun  a  m^ost  impor- 
tant device  in  that  direction.  There  are  already  several 
places  more  or  less  like  the  Charit}''  Organization  Society's 
woodyard  in  New  York,  that  will  give  supper,  lodging 
and  breakfast  to  anybody  sawing  his  stint  of  wood; 
and  they  are  often  able  to  help  applicants  who  appear 
deserving,  to  regular  employment.  There  are  also  a 
laundry  and  sewing-rooms  for  women,  on  the  same 
principles. 

438  (a)  Throw  Tliese   institutions   have    thrown   much 

tight  on  street-       light  on  strcet-bcgging.     They  are  partly 
^^^"'^'  supported  by  the  sale  to  the  benevolent, 

of  tickets  directing  applicants  to  them.  These  are 
bought  and  given  by  the  purchasers  to  persons  apply- 
ing to  them  for  charity.  Such  a  ticket  seldom  finds 
its  way  to  woodyard  or  workroom,  which  proves  that 
beggars  will  seldom  work  if  the  chance  is  given  them. 

,^„  ,  ^    L  There  are  government  schemes  for  find- 

439,  Labor  bureaus.  -  1      r         j.i  1  1     -^        /tm 

mg   work    lor    those    who    need    it.     The 

paternal  governments — Germany  at  the  head  again — 
generally  provide  labor  bureaus.  England  provides 
them  through  the  "Board  of  Trade",  a  half -govern- 
ment and  half-commercial  body;  and  in  America, 
they  took  their  start  in  connection  with  private  chari- 
table associations,  tho  the  recent  agitation  of  "Labor" 
for  paternal  governmental  care,  has  led  to  the  opening 
of  labor  bureaus  (and  making  places  in  them  for  the 
politicians)  by  several  cities.  A  fruitful  illustration  of 
"politics"  was  given  in  the  Chicago  labor  bureau  in 
'99.  They  refused  to  give  any  information  to  em- 
ployers whose  men  were  on  strike. 

Some  good,  however,  has  been  done  in  America  by 


eoo  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  439 

government  labor  bureaus.  Up  to  the  close  of  the 
last  century,  Ohio  and  Illinois  had  state  bureaus  which 
had  done  enough  good  to  the  laborers,  or  the  politicians, 
or  both,  to  encourage  Maryland  to  start  one;  and  there 
was  talk  of  having  a  chain  of  such  bureaus  all  over 
the  Union,  which  would  help  more  idle  labor  to  places 
where  it  was  needed — "a  consummation  devoutly  to  be 
wished."  The  new  associations  of  employers  have 
lately  started  a  great  many  as  reservoirs  of  labor  to  be 
drawn  on  in  strikes. 

As  to  government  itself  furnishing  actual  employ- 
ment, outside  of  its  legitimate  need  for  labor  on  public 
works:  somehow  it  does  not  work  well.  There  is 
always  a  boom  in  government  work  when  there  is  a 
boom  in  other  work:  probably  because  then  the  offi- 
cials feel  like  everybody  else — encouraged  to  go  ahead, 
w^hile  they  feel  the  effect  of  dull  times  in  the  converse 
way.  It  has  often  been  proposed  to  have  government 
work  specially  active  in  dull  times  when  many  men 
would  otherwise  be  out  of  employment.  France  tried  it 
in  the  public  workshops  after  the  revolution  of  '48,  and 
made  a  frightful  botch  of  it  (34).  More  success  has  been 
had,  especially  in  Germany  and  America,  by  lending 
people  plots  of  land  to  work  on  their  own  responsibility. 
This  has  the  advantage  over  the  French  system,  that  the 
laborer  cannot  get  wages  unless  he  earns  them. 

..r,  ,  Idleness  before  old  age  has  been  insured 

against  only  through  the  trade-unions  and 
other  organizations,  but  nearly  all  the  nations  of  Europe, 
and  also  Australasia,  have  taken  some  steps  regardmg 
insurance  against  want  in  old  age.  Where  premiums 
were  demanded,  it  has,  so  far,  not  been  found  easy  to 
make  the  workmen  pay  up.  Numerous  German  cities 
have  helped  out  the  sickness  and  accident  funds  of 
many  of  the  workmen's  societies,  and  Germany  is  now 
trying  to  get  a  portion  of  their  wages  devoted  to  in- 
surance against  the  idleness  of  old  age,  by  having  that 
portion  reserved  when  wages  are  paid.  She  does  this 
under  the  partial  disguise  of  making  the  employer  pay 


§  44i]  Recreations  and  Assistance.  501 

the  insurance — as  if  he  would  pay  that,  and  also  pay 
as  high  wages  as  otherwise — which  of  course  he  will 
not.  Denmark  gives  a  pension  out  and  out.  Ger- 
many and  Italy  add  about  an  equal  amount  to  whatever 
the  beneficiary  may  have  secured  for  himself.  Some  of 
the  Australasian  states  supplement  any  income  (or  no 
income)  that  the  beneficiary  may  have,  by  enough  to 
bring  it  up  to  a  fixed  amount,  whicli  of  course  encourages 
everybody  to  spend  as  he  goes.*  So  far  as  old-age 
pensions  can  be  provided  for  by  insurance  during  the 
active  period  of  life,  they  are  in  every  way  desirable; 
but  if  they  come  as  gratuities,  they  are,  of  course,  a 
premium  on  shiftlessness,  like  the  Australasian  schemes. 
There  is  danger  of  their  becoming,  like  a  good  many 
other  Australasian  schemes,  one  of  the  sentimental  fads 
for  giving  people  perfectly  able  to  take  care  of  them- 
selves, something  they  do  not  earn. 

Insurances  against  idleness,  illness  and  old  age,  are 
by  no  means  the  only  insurances  the  governments  have 
undertaken.  In  Berlin,  even  fire-insurance  is  a  govern- 
ment function,  and  is  made  obligatory  on  all  property 
owners.  The  same  has  been  proposed  in  London. 
Some  of  the  Australasian  states  have  begun  life-insur- 
ance. Here  our  sailors  have  long  had  to  contribute  to 
the  marine  hospital  fund. 

441.  General  con-  ^^  ^'^^^^  ^°^  ^one  over  about  all  of 
elusions  regarding  government  work  for  helping  the  needy 
*^  ^"  ^"  help    themselves.     One   general   truth   re- 

garding it  appears  pretty  plainly:  Germany — the  place 
where  the  people  grumble  most  against  government — 
where  the  desire  for  socialistic  change  is  most  important, 
is  the  place  where  government  attempts  most  for  the 
people;  and  the  United  States,  where  people  are,  on 
the  whole,  the  best  satisfied,  is  where  government  does 
least  for  them.     Yet  the  needy  are  not  worse  cared  for 

*  For  a  good  treatment  of  this  subject  see  the  Revieiv  of 
Reviews  for  July  1900,  pp.  95-97,  and  the  books  on  Australasia 
already  cited. 


502  TJie  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  441  a 

under    our  policy    than    under    the    opposite    pohcy. 

441  (a)  Mutual  Apparently  our  people,  left  to  themselves, 

help  better  than  do  for  cacli  Other,  including  their  poor,  as 

gouernmen    e  p.  j^^^,]-^  g^g^  ^f  j^q^  more  than,   government 

succeeds  in  doing  for  any  other  people. 

It  may  be  asked  whether  in  Germany  the  socialistic 
agitation  may  not  be  .the  cause  of  the  government's 
activity  in  charity,  rather  than  the  effect:  .so  that  if 
our  people  agitated  more,  government  would  effect 
more.  Probably  not:  because  in  Germany  the  govern- 
ment's activity  in  charity  began  before  the  discontent 
became  so  great. 

Another  principle  seems  to  peep  out  in  our  examina- 
tion, or  at  least  an  expansion  of  the  same  principle. 
First  we  saw  that  in  early  times,  charity  was  not  politics, 
but  religion.  Now  we  see  that  in  the  nations  politically 
most  advanced,  charity,  tho  no  longer  exclusively 
religion,  is  more  effective  than  ever  before,  and  still  is 
not  politics — or  at  least  is  politics  in  a  less  degree  than 
in  nations  under  more  primitive  political  institutions. 
While  a  large  proportion  of  the  private  support  of 
charity  still  comes  from  religious  people,  it  does  not 
come  in  the  old  ways:  in  America  there  is  no  state 
AA^  ihi  Tfco  church,    and    in    England    not    half    the 

441  {b).  The  ,      '        ,  ^  »_,,..  . 

Church,  the  state,     people     bclOUg     tO     OUe.       RcllglOUS     pCOplC 
the  Philanthropist.  i       •     •  ?  i  j      •  • 

now  administer  a  large  and  increasing 
portion  of  their  charities  through  secular  bodies,  and 
the  care  and  subscriptions  come  more  from  a  desire 
for  their  fellow  man's  present  welfare,  than  for  the 
donor's  own  future  welfare.  The  new  motive,  however, 
i^  yet  worthy  to  be  called  a  religious  one :  the  founder 
of  the  most  advanced  religion  preached  no  motive 
more  earnestly.  But  its  action  in  the  modern  secular 
world  is  a  very  different  thing  from  its  action  through 
the  mediaeval  priesthood. 

Do  we  propose,  then,  to  do  away  with  all  govern- 
ment charity,  and  depend  on  private  charity  alone? 
Surely  government  cannot  promote  the  general  con- 
venience in  any  more  general  or  more  necessary  way 
than  by  charity,  or  apparently  in  any  more  wasteful 


§441'^]  Recreations  and  Assistance.  503 

and  less  effective  way.  The  fact  that  an  end  is  good, 
is  no  proof  that  any  one  way  to  it  is  the  best  way, 
or  even  a  good  way.  We  should  not  be  as  prophetic 
as  those  who  favor  restricting  us  to  either  government 
charity  or  private  charity.  The  question  is  too  com- 
plicated to  judge  from  anything  but  experience  as  it 
accrues.  We  have  both  kinds  with  us,  and  both  kinds 
seem  to  result  from  an  entirely  natural  evolution.  The 
government  charities  cannot  well  evolve  any  faster  than 
governments  improve,  at  least  to  the  point  of  keeping 
charities  "out  of  politics"  by  securing  unpaid  charity 
officials;  and  the  private  charities  cannot  evolve  any 
faster  than  human  sympathies  and  ability  improve — 
any  faster  than  men  grow  rich,  and  rich  men  grow 
philanthropic,  both  of  which  growths  have  lately  been 
very  rapid.  The  only  plain  things  to  do,  are  to  improve 
government  and  improve  human  nature,  so  that  all 
charities  may  improve. 

And  now  let  us  descend  from  the  statesman,  the 
priest  and  the  philanthropist,  to  that  very  common- 
441  CO.  The  place  individual  the  taxpayer.     Although 

taxpayer.  ^^    jg    natural    to    mention    sanitation    in 

connection  with  works  for  the  general  convenience,  it 
really  is  part  of  the  machinery  for  the  protection  of 
rights:  it  concerns  taxpayers  as  well  as  non-taxpayers, 
and  the  questions  of  devoting  to  it  the  powers  of 
government  are  not  to  be  limited  to  considerations  of 
pecuniary  profit.  The  same  is  true  even  of  some  forms 
of  charity.  Under  health  we  may  include  freedom 
from  the  darkness  and  dirt  of  the  soft-coal  smoke. 
All  these  questions  of  cleanliness  and  light  and  quiet 
have  their  jesthetic  side,  and  so  are  connected  with 
the  question  of  parks  and  museums.  If  taxpayers 
should  bear  the  burdens  of  the  first  group,  why  not 
of  the  second?  The  question,  however,  is  not  as  diffi- 
cult as  at  first  it  seems :  for  probably  the  taxpayers  use 
the  latter  luxuries  so  much  more  than  the  non-taxpayers 
do;  and  the  luxuries,  of  the  parks  at  least,  do  so  much 
for   the   healtli   of   those   non-taxpayers   whose   illness 


^04  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§441  c 

would  threaten  all  with  infection,  that  the  taxpayer 
can  well  afford  to  pay  for  them.  Paradoxical  as  it 
may  seem,  it  is  probably  true  that  the  taxpayers  are 
often  more  in  favor  of  such  expenditures  than  the  non- 
taxpayers.  I  was  present  once  at  a  meeting  in  a  small 
city  to  decide  whether  to  buy  land  for  a  park.  A 
demagogue  who  is  a  small  taxpayer,  rallied  his  cohorts, 
not  half  of  whom  were  taxpayers,  and  defeated  the 
scheme.  His  argument  was:  "Mr.  So-and-so  and 
Mr.  So-and-so  and  Mr.  vSo-and-so  let  us  drive  through 
their  places :  what  more  park  do  we  need  ? "  Yet  all  the 
Messieurs  So-and-so  were  in  favor  of  the  park,  tho 
they  would  have  had  to  pay  more  for  it  than  all  its 
opponents  put  together,  and  tho  they  had  parks  of 
their  own. 

Whatever  opinion  may  be  held  of  the  right  of  the 
non-taxpaying  majority  to  luxuriate  in  gaslight  at 
the  expense  of  the  taxpaying  minority,  and  whatever 
may  be  thought  of  the  right  of  the  badly-placed  and 
badly-informed  majority  to  secure  sanitary  conditions 
and  medical  help  at  the  expense  of  the  well-placed 
and  well-informed  minority,  let  us  go  a  step  farther 
and  realize  that  there  can  be  no  question  that  it  is 
to  the  interest  of  the  minority  that  the  majority  should 
have  the  sanitary  conditions  at  least. 

It  is  not  easy  to  determine  just  how  far  "we  are 
members  of  one  another",  but  it  is  plain  that  we  are 
far  enough  to  make  it  to  the  rich  man's  interest  that 
his  poor  neighbor  should  not  be  spreading  infection, 
that  his  poor  employee  should  be  in  health  good  enough 
to  earn  his  wages,  that  none  of  his  neiglibors  should  at- 
tack his  health  by  foul  drainage,  foul  smells,  and  foul 
noises,  and  that  the  expense  of  raising  his  poor  neigh- 
bor beyond  the  habit  of  spreading  such,  is  an  expense 
for  the  rich  man  to  welcome. 

The  question  regarding  libraries  is  a  little  like  that 
regarding  parks  and  museums,  and  a  little  more  like 
that  regarding  sanitation.  But  altho  there  can  be 
no  doubt  of  the  ultimate  effect  of  the  library  in  pro- 
tecting the  property  and  liberty  not  only  of  the  rich 


§  441  d]  Recreations  and  Assistance.  505 

man  but  of  the  poor  man  who  is  less  able  to  protect 
his  own,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  "little  learning" 
which  has  so  far  been  disseminated  among  the  non- 
taxpayers  at  the  expense  of  taxpayers,  has  been  pre- 
eminently the  "dangerous  thing":  for,  so  far,  it  has 
only  awakened  among  the  non-taxpayers  dissatisfaction 
with  their  condition,  without  yet  affording  the  enlight- 
enment necessary  to  discriminate  the  glittering  short- 
cut quack  remedies  for  it,  from  the  sober  and  arduous 
real  ones. 

The  most  effective  settlement  of  the  issue  between 
the  taxpayers  and  the  non-taxpayers  would  be  such 
an  increase  in  the  number  of  the  taxpayers  as  to  put 
them  in  the  majority.  On  the  part  of  the  present  tax- 
payers, every  effort  toward  that  end  through  public 
education  and  liberal  business,  is  a  noble  form  of  en- 
lightened selfishness. 

The  moral  effects  of  such  agencies  are  to  be  regarded 
as  well  as  the  physical  and  financial  ones,  as  are  also 
those  of  the  more  impressive  laying-out  of  cities  and 
grouping  of  public  buildings,  now  happily  receiving 
increased  attention.  That  noble  spaces  and  beautiful 
architecture  tend  to  expand  and  chasten  the  minds  of 
all  who  gaze  upon  them,  there  can  be  no  question. 
Neither  can  it  be  questioned  that  the  mere  economies, 
not  to  speak  of  the  higher  satisfactions,  of  living  in  a 
community  of  broad-minded  and  honest  people,  can 
justify  liberal  expenditure  on  the  part  of  those  who 
pay  the  taxes,  and  tend  to  increase  the  number  of 
them — a  result  which,  we  are  constantly  reminded  from 
each  successive  point  of  view,  is  the  i3est  security  for 
an  orderly  and  happy  community. 

441  (d).  Many  im-  But  it  is  an  opcu  qucstion  whether 
ta7payl"l^ "°^ '^^  parks,  boulevards,  and  fine  arrangements 
expense,  of    public    buildings   are   at    the   expense 

of  the  taxpayers.  The  experience  is  quite  general 
that  the  value  of  near-by  property  is  increased  by 
them  more  than  they  cost,  and  it  is  now  proposed 
as   a    regular    policy  for    cities    in    exercising  eminent 


5o6  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§44i  d 

domain  for  those  purposes,  to  take  enough  more  land 
than  immediately  needed,  to  make  its  sale  at  the 
increased  values  compensate  the  expense  of  the  im- 
provement itself.  Unless  this  is  done,  the  unearned 
increment  goes  into  private  hands,  except  so  far  as  it 
is  secured  to  the  city  by  the  increased  assessments  on 
the  adjoining  property.  Probably  the  old  method  of 
taking  only  the  property  actually  devoted  to  the  im- 
provement, makes  more  room  for  graft  than  the  more 
modern  method  of  taking  adjoining  property  too :  i:nder 
the  new  method,  politicians  would  probably  find  it  more 
difficult  to  buy  for  an  advance.  The  community  in 
general  would  be  more  apt  to  secure  the  advance. 

The  question  whether  the  advances  near  parks  and 
boulevards  are  apt  to  be  great  enough  to  pay  not  only 
for  the  land  taken,  and  its  improvement,  but  also 
provide  a  fund  for  its  maintenance,  is  not  as  well 
settled  regarding  the  last  particular  as  regarding  the 
others;  but  regarding  the  annual  expense,  there  is  no 
complaint  worth  considering  from  those  who  pay  it, 
and  certainly  none  from  those  who  do  not. 

But  in  considering  these  subjects,  it  is  most  important 
constantly  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  only  men  who  really 
are  non-taxpa^^ers  are  tramps,  jailbirds,  inmates  of 
asylums,  or  dependents  on  their  friends.  Everybody 
who  pays  rent,  pays  taxes;  every  servant  who  lives  in 
his  employer's  house,  gets  less  wages  than  he  would 
if  no  taxes  were  paid  on  that  house.  Let  the  sentence 
stand  as  expressed,  so  that  I  may  tell  the  young  student 
that  it  again  illustrates  the  complexity  of  the  subject. 
Before  I  had  finished  it,  I  reflected  that,  as  we  shall 
see  hereafter,  taxes  are  not  diffused  or  even  levied  with 
mathematical  justice,  and  that  servants'  wages  are  regu- 
lated by  dozens  of  agencies,  some  of  which  may  counter- 
act the  effectiveness  of  that  of  taxation.  "Every"  is 
a  word  that  writers  on  social  subjects  should  use  spar- 
ingly. Of  the  taxation  question,  however,  my  young 
friend  will  probably  see  all  that  he  wants  later. 


CHAPTER   XXXIII. 


THE    DEFECTIVE    CLASSES. 


As  we  have  already  seen  (227),  there  is  no  cause 
of  poverty.  Every  man  is  born  absolutely  poor. 
Wealth  alone  is  caused.  Yet  there  niust  be  some 
reason  why  people  suffer  from  poverty  rather  than 
cause  wealth.  Temporary  poverty  may  result  from 
temporary  misfortune,  sickness  and  accident  (we 
442,  The  persist-  have  already  discussed  the  means  of 
ently  poor.  helping  such  cases) ,  but  some  people  are 

always  poor — give  them  work  and  they  do  not  keep  it ; 
help  them  up  and  they  slip  back,  all  from  sheer  incapa- 
city— physical,  mental  or  moral, — to  produce  enough 
for  comfort.  "Physical"  will  generally  describe  it,  if 
in  "physical"  is  included  a  defective  nervous  system. 

It  is  legitimate  to  inquire  what  duties  in  the  way  of 
taxpaying,  these  incapable  people  perform,  that  give 
them  rights  to  have  taxes  spent  upon  them.  Our 
whole  system  is  built  up  on  the  principle  that  the 
citizen  has  no  rights  if  he  does  not  perform  the  cor- 
responding duties ;  and  to  deprive  him  of  the  rights  if  he 
does  not  perform  duties,  is  the  only  way  to  make  him 
behave  himself.  Yet  a  baby  or  a  lunatic  apparently 
performs  no  duties,  and  still  the  state  secures  to  a 
baby  or  a  lunatic,  rights  to  life  and  property.  What 
becomes  of  our  whole  system,  then?  The  answer  is 
that  the  state  can  be  generous  if  it  wants  to,  just  as  a 
parent  can.  Nor  does  it  all  end  in  generosity:  the  state 
needs  citizens — sometimes  even  to  the  extent  of  paying 
bounties  for  large  families:  so  it  is  well  for  it  to  pro- 
tect the  babies. 

507 


5o8  i  he  ProniDtion  of  Convenience.  [§  442  a 

But  it  does  not  need  incapables  and  lunatics  too, 
and  the  question  why  they  should  not  be  left  to  die 
A  An,  ,  /H   /o„*     out,   has   had  a  great  deal  of  very  pro- 

442  (a).  Neglect       .        '         , .  .  =>  ^  .  ^  /■  . 

increases  the  tound  discussion.  Leaving  out  Sentiment, 
number.  ^^^  ^^^^  ^^^  cliance  that  a  habit  of  neglect- 

ing them  would  soon  discipline  us  to  let  some  starve 
who  ought  not  to,  one  -sufficient  argument  seems  to  be 
that  they  will  not  "die  out"  when  you  leave  them  to, 
but  that  in  countries  wliere  they  are  neglected  most, 
they  increase  most.  Then  there  is  the  argument  that  we 
glanced  at  before:  states  which  do  not  take  care  of 
their  incapables,  do  not  get  ahead  as  well  as  states  that 
do.  China  and  very  backward  countries  generally  let 
them  starve.  Civilized  Europe  and  America  take 
care  of  them.  It  is  a  very  mysterious  business:  per- 
haps it  will  not  do  even  to  say  that  such  people  are 
of  no  use:  for  some  very  fine  types  of  character  seem 
to  be  developed  by  taking  care  of  them.  Yet  that 
result  does  not  seem  to  have  uniformly  followed  political 
control  of  charitable  institutions — in  America  at  least: 
there  have  been  a  good  many  frightful  abuses  and 
scandals. 

Private  institutions  are  more  nearly  free  from  such 
than  the  government  ones.  Yet  government  alms- 
houses and  poorhouses  may  be  considered 
as  established  beyond  debate.  But  when 
the  nervous  defects  mentioned  amount  to  positive  in- 
sanity, the  care  of  the  insane  is  left  to  private  initiative 
in  India,  Turkey  and  China,  and  it  was  in  Christendom 
pretty  nearly  to  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
In  Christendom  before  that,  the  poor  insane  were  left 
at  large,  or  caged  away  somewhere  in  the  cellars  of 
the  poorhouses,  and  the  rich  insane  were  cared  for  at 
home  or  in  private  asylums  conducted  for  gain.  Since 
then,  there  have  been  some  considerable  asylums  built 
from  private  benefaction,  as  well  as  government  asylums 
everywhere  as  needed.  Probably  the  general  in- 
crease of  government  asylums  during  the  last  half- 
century  sprang  largely  from  government's  increased 
protection  of  the  citizen  from  violence.     Moreover,  the 


§  444  <^^]  The  Defective  Classes.  509 

increased  realization  that  criminality  and  insanity  are 
closely  allied,  increased  a  tendency  to  send  delinquents 
to  asylums  and  reformatories  rather  than  to  prisons. 

444  Th  •  ■  I  Prisons  should  be  more  like  asylums. 
As  just  intimated,  it  has  become  estab- 
lished that  criminals  are  only  a  kind  of  lunatics.  True, 
some  of  them  are  very  intelligent,  but  so  are  some  of 
the  people  in  insane  asylums — outside  of  a  few  special 
weaknesses — and  directions  of  the  wind  and  phases 
of  the  moon.  This  is  worth  looking  into  carefully. 
There  are  few  things  in  which  the  state  is  farther  be- 
hind the  scientific  world,  than  the  treatment  of  all  sorts 
of  defective  people,  criminals  especially;  and  every  citi- 
zen needs  to  get  the  best  ideas  that  have  been  reached 
on  the  subject,  and  to  do  what  he  can  to  bring  the 
state  up  to  them. 

A  criminal  has  no  passions  that  other  men  have  not, 
unless  it  is  the  passion  for  goodness  that  inspires  some 
rare  souls.  Then  criminals  do  not  sin  merely  because 
they  have  the  passions  that  all  men  have — for  gold  or 
love  or  power,  or  even  revenge;  but  because  they  lack 
the  qualities  that  in  better  men  keep  the  same  passions 
under  control. 

444  (a).  Generally  Among  thcse  restraining  powers,  the  first, 
defective.  perhaps,  is  a  capacity  of  realizing  conse- 

quences. The  savage  and  the  criminal  live  only  in 
the  moment.  When  lying  or  thieving  or  killing  is 
the  immediate  way  out  of  a  difficulty  (and  they  have 
so  little  forethought  that  they  are  generally  in  diffi- 
culty), they  prefer  it  to  a  slower  way,  and  have  none 
of  the  evolved  man's  shrinking  to  overcome. 

Criminals  generally  are  found  to  be  even  physically 
less  sensitive  than  normal  people:  they  tattoo  them- 
selves to  a  degree  that  normal  people  cannot  stand; 
they  do  not  shrink  as  normal  people  do  from  the  sight 
of  blood;  generally  speaking,  they  are  indifferent  to 
losses — of  money,  keepsakes,  opportunity,  friends,  rela- 
tives, their  own  children;  they  do  not  themselves  know 
enough  of  pain  to  be  deterred  by  sympathy  with  others 


5IO  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§4440 

from  inflicting  it.  In  a  word,  they  are  defective,  just 
as  lunatics  and  chronic  paupers  are.  Anybody  who 
has  sat  in  a  criminal  court  can  see  that,  with  rare 
exceptions,  they  are  smaller,  weaker  and  stupider  than 
ordinary  men.  The  best  .science  declares  that  they 
should  be  treated  as  other  defectives  are. 

In  detail:  the  best  science  begins  with  Mrs.  Glass's 
famous  recipe  for  cooking  hare:  "first  catch  your  hare" 
— first  catch  your  criminal — be  sure  you  have  got  a 
criminal.  If  you  catch  a  boy  who  for  the 
step^does  not""^""^  Arst  time  has  yielded  to  some  strong  temp- 
it"m"nar^^'^  tation,  do  not  send  him  to  jail  to  keep 
company  with  past-masters  in  crime,  and 
be  taught  by  them — do  not  make  your  criminal  in  that 
way.  After  you  have  scared  him  so  that  he  will  not  do 
it  again  unless  he  has  a  strong  natural  bent  that  way,  or 
rather  a  great  lack  of  the  qualities  that  would  prevent 
his  doing  it  again,  let  him  go.  If  he  has  the  lack, 
and  does  do  it  again,  then  send  him  where  he  will  be 
treated  for  a  cure — to  some  reform  school  where  he  will 
be  trained  in  regular  ways,  and  taught  self-control  and 
some  honest  industry,  and,  perhaps  most  important, 
where  he  will  be  cured  of  the  physical  defects  that  are 
almost  always  found  in  criminals.  And  especially  do 
not  let  him  out  until  you  are  satisfied  that  the  treat- 
ment has  been  successful.  Hearty  approval  is  due 
the  "Children's  Courts"  which  have  done  so  much  to 
keep  juvenile  offenders  away  from  the  criminal  educa- 
tion of  the  jails,  and  start  them  toward  worthy  lives. 
444  (c).  The  hide-  If  the  offender  appears  to  be  made  over 
terminate  sentence.  ^\\  right,  and  is  let  out,  and  gocs  bad  again, 
repeat  the  process.  By  that  time,  tho,  the  authorities 
should  be  pretty  well  convinced  that  he  cannot  be  cured, 
and  should  not  let  him  out  at  all  unless  he  gives  over- 
whelming proof  that  he  has  been  cured.  If  he  cannot  be 
taught  and  cured,  keep  him  till  he  dies. 

Sentencing  a  criminal  for  a  definite  length  of  time,  is 
now  regarded  by  all  authorities  on  the  subject,  as  absurd: 
there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  judge  can  tell 
how  long  it  is  going  to  take  to  effect  a  cure,  or  that  if 


§  444  ^]  The  Defective  Classes.  511 

half  a  dozen  men  are  sent  up  for  the  same  time  for  the 
same  crime,  it  is  going  to  take  just  the  same  time  to 
cure  any  one  as  to  cure  any  other. 

A  still  stronger  objection  to  a  sentence  that  can 
terminate  before  a  man  is  cured,  is  that  nearly  all  the 
worst  crimes  are  committed  by  men  who  are  turned  loose 
from  prison  simply  because  their  "time  is  up",  without 
any  reference  whatever  to  whether  they  are  fit  to  be 
at  large.  As  most  criminals  are  insane,  it  is  correspond- 
ingly insane  to  attempt  to  draw  a  hard-and-fast  line 
between  them  and  other  madmen,  either  in  diagnosis 
or  treatment.  Nobody  thinks  of  committing  an  ordi- 
nary lunatic  for  a  definite  period. 

444  crf).  Cheaper  ^^^^  systcms  of  punishment  that  we 
to  lieep' rounders  have  inherited,  were  not  based  on  any 
permanen  y.  {(^q^  of  curing  tlic  Criminal.  They  were 
based  on  the  old  idea  of  retaliation,  and  on  the  some- 
what better  one  of  deterring  others.  Until  recently, 
the  criminal  was  not  even  regarded  as  defective  or 
diseased,  but  rather  as  "the  natural  man".  Now  that 
he  is  proved  to  be  the  ^^nnatural  man,  the  indeterminate 
sentence  is  the  only  thing  to  fit  the  new  discovery,  and 
it  should  be  indeterminate  in  fact  as  well  as  in  name. 
The  criminal  should  be  released  as  soon  as  he  is  cured, 
but  kept  until  he  is  cured. 

It  may  seem  an  extreme  idea  that  criminals  should 
be  supported  in  dignified  retirement  at  the  expense  of 
honest  people,  but  there  seems  no  other  way,  except 
to  "remove"  them,  which  we  will  consider  later. 

The  idea  of  support  at  the  expense  of  the  state  is 
quite  the  rule  among  the  criminals  themselves:  generally, 
as  soon  as  they  have  served  time  on  one  charge,  they  get 
themselves  sent  up  on  another.  Most  do  it,  however, 
from  sheer  absence  of  self-control.  Every  penitentiary 
contains  men  serving  their  tenth  or  twelfth  term.  It 
would  be  cheaper  to  keep  them  steadily  after  their 
third,  and  save  the  community  from  their  later  depre- 
dations and  the  expense  of  their  arrests,  trials  and 
carriage  back  to  prison. 


512  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  444  d 

New  York  already  has  a  law  that  when  a  man  has 
been    demonstrated    an    habitual    criminal,    the    courts 
can  control  him  in  many  ways  that  they  have  not  the 
power  to  do  in  the  case  of  ordinary  criminals. 
444  (e).  Prison  There  are  certainly  some  honest  persons 

labof,  -^j^Q  agree  with  the  criminals  in  thinking 

that  prisoners  ought  to  have  a  life  of  ease  at  the  expense 
of  the  state.  The  trade-unions,  the  country  over, 
object  to  prisoners  being  made  to  earn  their  own  living, 
on  the  ground  that  they  would  be  competing  with 
honest  labor.  Their  competition  would  really  amotmt 
to  very  little.  Somewhere  about  one  person  of  every 
five  hundred  old  enough  to  earn  a  living,  is  in  prison. 
Of  course  if  their  competition  actually  lowered  the  price 
of  labor  in  proportion  to  their  numbers  (which  it  could 
not  begin  to:  for  they  are  inefficient),  it  would  reduce 
wages  but  one  fifth  of  a  cent  on  a  dollar.  But  what  the 
idleness  of  the  prisoners  actually  does,  is  that,  as  the 
community  has  to  support  the  prisoners,  the  wage- 
earner  pays  his  share  of  keeping  them  in  idleness.  He 
may  think  that  he  does  not,  because  he  generally  pays 
no  taxes.  But  as  we  shall  see  later,  taxes  distribute 
themselves  so  that  the  wage-earner  who  may  pay  none 
directly,  actually  does  pay  them  indirectly,  in  increased 
prices  of  nearly  everything  he  uses — from  his  house  to 
his  matches;  and  he  also  probably  pays  taxes  by 
getting  less  wages  than  he  would  get  if  the  man  who 
pays  the  wages  paid  less  taxes. 

The  wage-earner  resists  setting  the  prisoners  to  work, 
because  he  thinks  and  knows  very  little  about  what 
affects  his  outgo,  and  thinks  very  much,  tho  still 
knowing  very  little,  about  what  affects  his  income. 
His  only  thought  is  to  keep  wages  high ;  he  does  not 
reflect  that  everything  which  raises  wages,  except  the 
efficiency  of  the  worker,  must  raise  prices  too.  Per- 
haps the  spasm  of  high  prices  and  high  nominal  wages 
occurring  aboiit  1905-7  may  lead  to  a  little  reflection  on 
the  relation  between  them. 

As  between  the  unions  and  the  prisons,  a  unionist 
makes  one  kind  of  goods;  the  prisoners  could  make, 


§445]  The  Defective  Classes.  513 

say,  a  dozen  kinds  that  the  man  uses.  Assuming  him 
to  reason  correctly  that  if  he  prevents  their  making 
the  goods  he  makes  himself,  he  keeps  up  his  own  wages, 
he  nevertheless  pays  the  higher  price  for  the  dozen 
kinds  he  does  not  make,  with  enterprisers'  and  middle- 
men's profits  thrown  in,  while  he  gets  the  benefit  of 
the  higher  first  cost  of  only  the  kind  he  makes  himself. 
We  treated  this  fallacy  before  (228  h),  when  we  con- 
sidered the  efforts  to  raise  prices  by  scamping  work  or 
lazing,  and  to  make  every  man  rich  by  making  money 
poor  (361).  This  time,  the  laborer  does  not  laze  him- 
self, but  he  wants  other  people  to  laze,  which  affects 
him  as  a  consumer.  We  shall  meet  the  same  fallacy 
again  when  we  come  to  taxation. 

..^r.L      ■  Grave    consideration    has    been    given, 

445.  Euthanasia.  ^        .,,    ,  ^  .  .        .-,  .■ 

and  will  long  be  given,   to   the   question 

whether  it  would  not  be  cheaper  and  safer  and  better 
in  all  ways,  even  for  the  incurable  criminal  himself, 
and  also  for  the  other  hopelessly  insane,  to  turn  on 
the  gas  in  his  room  some  cold  night  when  the  windows 
are  shut,  or  end  the  sad  and  repulsive  problem  of  his 
life  in  some  other  painless  way — euthanasia,  as  the 
Greeks  called  it.  Two  reasons  are  urged  against  it: 
the  responsibility  of  deciding  what  people  to  favor 
with  it,  is  too  great  to  trust  our  politicians  with;  and 
familiarity  with  the  infliction  of  death,  even  if  done 
secretly  and  decently,  is  too  apt  to  brutalize  the  sensi- 
bilities of  the  public.  True,  government  decides  now 
on  whom  to  kill,  but  it  decides  with  a  stupidity  more 
colossal,  if  possible,  than  it  shows  on  any  other  question, 
unless  that  of  "the  illiterate  voter".  iVs  a  rule,  it 
kills  for  but  one  crime,  and  in  that  connection  does 
not  attempt  to  consider  the  question  of  a  man's  re- 
claimability  at  all.  How,  then,  is  it  in  any  shape  to 
decide  the  very  delicate  question  of  whether,  on  the 
whole,  a  variety  of  offences  point  out  a  man  as  irre- 
claimable or  not?  Moreover,  under  the  present 
power  of  the  boss,  it  might  be  exceedingly  dangerous 
to    enlarge    government's    power    of    inflicting    death. 


514  T lie  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§445 

It  might  not  take  long  to  virtually,  if  not  nominally, 

get  back  to  the  old  ways  where  the  death-penalty  was 

freely   used   in   mere   political   conflict.     It   does   seem 

hard,  however,  that  when  people  are  ready  to  waste 

thousands  of  the  best  lives  in  the  community  in  trifling 

wars,  they  cannot  be  educated  up  to  destroying  a  few 

hundred  pestiferous  lives  for  the  sake  of  ridding  the 

world  of  insanity  and  crime. 

But  it  is  probable  that  by  the  time  the 

446.  A  society  able  communitv  is  educated  that  far,  it  will  be 
to  use  ideal  remedies      ,  .    j    V,  j      ■    •      •       i-^  .1  ■^^ 

will  not  need  them,  educated    beyond    cnmmality — there    will 

be  no  criminals  to  treat.  Euthanasia  is 
like  the  other  short-cut  remedies — not  only  for  crimi- 
nality but  for  uncongenial  marriages  and  poverty  and 
most  of  the  evils  that  afflict  society:  by  the  time 
people  are  educated  so  as  to  be  fit  to  handle  euthanasia, 
free  divorce,  communism,  socialism  and  the  rest  of  the 
short-cut  remedies,  they  will  be  educated  beyond  the 
infirmities  of  health  and  temper  and  judgment  that 
make  the  criminality  and  the  unhappy  marriages  and 
the  poverty. 

What  we  have  said  regards  onh'  the 
itlth'^asTpenlny!  scientific  question  of  disposing  of  incurable 
criminals  without  waiting  for  them  to 
commit  what  are  now  called  "capital"  crimes.  But 
there  has  been  much  question  also  about  the  advisability 
of  the  death-penalty  for  the  capital  crimes.  Capital 
punishment  has  been  done  away  with  in  Michigan, 
Rhode  Island,  Wisconsin,  Iowa  and  Maine,  and  in  1906 
they  were  agitating  its  abolition  in  Vermont.  Iowa  and 
Maine  restored  it,  but  in  Maine  at  least,  the  restoration 
is  virtually  a  dead  letter. 

The  civic  arguments  (the  religious  ones  are  outside 
of  our  present  studies)  in  favor  of  the  death-penalty 
for  murder,  arson,  etc.,  are  that  nothing  else  is  so  effi- 
cient as  a  preventive  of  such  crimes,  that  life-sentences 
cannot  be  enforced,  and  that  so  far  as  they  are  enforced, 
they  crowd  the  jails  with  people  that  it  is  more  expen- 
sive to  keep  than  to  hang.     The  arguments  against  it  are 


§44  7]  The  Defective  Classes.  515 

that  it  brutalizes  the  community — to  such  an  extent 
that  statistics  do  not  prove  capital  crimes  less  frequent 
where  the  death-penalty  exists ;  that  statistics  also  prove 
juries  less  apt  to  convict  in  face  of  that  penalty,  even  of 
the  minor  degrees  of  crime  not  involving  the  death- 
penalty  :  and  so  criminals  are  more  apt  to  go  free ;  that 
it  shuts  the  eyes  to  the  whole  great  qtiestion  of  reforma- 
tion; that  it  forever  prevents  the  correction  of  a  mis- 
take in  the  conviction  of  an  innocent  person;  and, 
finally,  Carlyle's  argument  that  the  worst  use  you  can 
put  a  man  to  is  to  hang  him — in  short,  that  capital 
punishment  is  not  only  brutal  but  stupid.  There  can- 
not be  much  doubt  of  its  brutality,  but  brutality  is 
sometimes  necessary,  even  at  the  hands  of  as  good 
men  as  Gustavus  Adolphus  and  George  Washington; 
but  stupidity  never  is.  As  to  the  stupidities  which 
statistics  do  not  touch:  first  as  to  reformation.  There 
is  certainly  more  chance,  in  one  sense,  of  reforming  a 
murderer,  than  of  reforming  most  other  criminals, 
because  other  criminals  are  not  apt  to  be  taken  hold 
of  in  earnest  at  their  first  offence,  while  a  murderer, 
tho  it  be  his  first  offence,  is  reasonably  sure  to  be. 
But  moreover  and  most  important,  there  are  so  many 
more  possible  motives  for  killing  than  for  mxost  crimes, 
that  there  is  a  proportionally  wide  chance  of  its  being 
committed  by  a  reformable  person;  it  may  even  be 
a  rough  form  of  justice,  while  few  other  crimes  can 
be.  Probably  most  life-sentences  are  for  killing, 
and  yet  the  report  of  the  New  York  superintendent  of 
prisons,  for  1895,  says  that  of  the  life-term  prisoners 
who  have  been  released  during  the  past  thirty-five 
years,  less  than  one  per  cent,  have  again  committed 
crimes.  Everybody  knows  that  those  discharged  after 
serving  short  sentences  for  minor  crimes,  are  nearly 
sure  to  err  again.  But  on  the  other  hand,  killing 
ordinarily  requires  more  insensibility  to  suffering  than 
minor  crimes  do,  and  therefore  is  proportionally  apt 
to  be  the  work  of  a  defective  person.  As  a  rule,  the 
murders  are  not  committed  by  Peter  Ibbetsons 

As  to  Carlyle's  argument,  an  average  man  is  variously 


51 6  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§447 

figured  to  be  worth,  to  an  average  community,  ten  times 
as  much  as  a  horse,  and  convict  labor  is  generally 
figured  as  worth  about  a  third  of  average  labor.  So 
the  murderer,  if  no  meaner  brute  than  convicts  in  general, 
is,  at  best,  worth  (if  the  trade-unions  will  let  him  work) 
not  more  than  six  hundred  dollars;  and  with  all  the 
usual  fuss  and  fees,  it  costs  more  than  that  to  kill  him. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  it  costs  more  still  to  keep  him 
alive:  so  Carlyle's  argument  is  worthless.  And  if,  as 
in  many  cases,  probably  most,  the  murderer  is  an  out- 
and-out  defective  natural-bom  criminal,  it  is  certainly 
cheaper  to  kill  him  than  to  stand  the  chance  of  his 
getting  out  again ;  but  even  then,  it  would  seem  sensible 
to  test  his  quality  first,  if  science  and  politics  were 
advanced  enough  to  do  it. 

The  whole  question  sums  up  like  so  many  others — as 
long  as  people  are  brutal  and  stupid,  they  must  do  some 
brutal  and  stupid  things.  War — with  either  guns  or 
tariffs,  lynch-law  and  capital  punishment  are  really 
all  of  a  piece :  there  is  no  question  of  their  frequent  neces- 
sity now — there  are  times  and  places  when  to  do  without 
some  one  of  them,  is  to  do  worse.  Yet  so  far  as  we 
advance  justice  and  science,  so  far  we  work  for  the 
disappearance  of  them  all. 

We  may  have  been  a  little  irregular  in  considering 
the  care  of  the  criminal  as  among  society's  functions 
for  the  general  convenience,  when  it  is  really  a  matter 
of  protecting  against  him  the  community's  rights  to 
property,  safety  and  life.  But  we  have  had  more  than 
one  occasion  to  realize  that  no  system  of  classification  we 
can  make,  will  group  all  the  matter  to  be  considered,  in 
hard-and-fast  divisions.  Of  course  the  criminal  could 
properly  have  been  considered  when  we  were  treating 
of  protecting  rights;  but  perhaps,  after  all,  to  include 
him  with  the  other  defectives  whom  society  treats  for 
the  general  convenience,  will  help  us  realize  his  true 
position  and  true  needs. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

THE  young;  education. 

And  now  we  come  to  a  more  cheerful  topic,  even 
tho  it  regards  another  class  of  those  who,  begging  their 
pardon,  are  defective  and  cannot  help  themselves — the 
young. 

As  affecting  the  sphere  of  government,  we  need  to 
inquire  whether  when  they  lose  their  relatives,  or  their 
relatives  do  not  care  for  them,  they  are  generally 
cared  for,  in  the  most  advanced  states,  by  government 
or  by  private  institutions.  Perhaps  the  care  of  orphans 
remains  with  the  churches  more  than  any 
other  form  of  charity — probably  largely 
because  each  church  wishes  to  make  sure  of  retaining 
them  in  its  own  membership.  Moreover,  the  state  is 
also  often  saved  from  their  care  by  the  fact  that  many 
persons  who  have  raised  themselves  from  a  childhood 
of  needy  orphanage  to  a  manhood  of  wealth  and  be- 
neficence, have  endowed  orphan  asylums.  The  two 
causes  have  done  much  to  limit  the  need  of  govern- 
ment activity  in  this  respect. 

P       ,  But  beyond  government's  limited  care  of 

the  children  who  do  not  receive  care  from 
relatives  or  private  beneficence,  its  relation  to  the  edu- 
cation of  children  in  general,  presents  some  strange 
paradoxes.  The  two  civilized  governments  which  have 
been  most  active  in  it  are  probably  the  most  paternal 
and  the  least  paternal,  Germany  and  the  United  States. 
The  paternalism  of  course  accounts  for  Germany,  but 
for  this  strange  outcrop  of  paternalism  in  the  United 

517 


51 8  The  Promotion  oj  Convenience.  [§449 

States,  we  have  to  look  back  to  the  facts  that  the 
early  settlers,  especially  of  New  England,  contained 
an  exceptionally  large  proportion  of  people  who  appre- 
ciated education,  and  that  they  realized,  while  the 
government  was  taking  shape,  that  universal  education 
was  a  necessary  safeguard  against  the  dangers  of  uni- 
versal suffrage.  Tliese  dangers  they  did  not  them- 
selves generally  incur:  for  they  generally  held  to 
property  qualifications,  as  well  as  educational  ones. 
449  (a).  The  iiiit-  But  in  the  idea  that  education  is  neces- 
erate  voter.  sary  to   the  votcr,'  their  descendants  are 

inconsistent  to  a  degree  of  absurdity  before  which  even 
ridicule  itself  is  paralyzed:  while  on  one  hand  we  in- 
sist that  the  voter  must  be  educated,  on  the  other  we 
devise  ballots  with  emblems,  so  that  they  can  be  voted 
by  people  who  cannot  read. 

449  (b).  Unusable  There  are  signs  in  the  two  countries 
education.  whicli  lead  in  education,  that  even  so  good 

a  thing  as  education  may  be  overdone;  or  at  least, 
lately  there  have  been  very  portentous  signs,  espe- 
cially in  Germany,  that  it  can  be  done  very  much 
out  of  proportion.  While,  as  is  generally  known,  Ger- 
many's splendid  technical  education  is  spreading  her 
manufactures  over  the  world,  she  is  having  trouble  with 
many  men  educated  in  the  old-fashioned  literary, 
gossip -historical  and  would-be-philosophical  way,  who 
can  find  nothing  to  do.  Her  paupers,  and  especially 
her  suicides,  are  being  largely  increased  from  this  class. 
Other  governments,  too,  despite  some  recent  improve- 
ment, are  spreading  too  much  education  of  a  kind  that 
is  not  needed,  and  which  on  that  account  is  perhaps 
doing  more  harm  than  good.  The  infection  has  spread 
even  to  Greece — perhaps  because  she  is  busier  with  her 
glorious  past  than  with  her  needy  present. 
449  (c).  Usable  Most  boys  are  to  be  mechanics,  farmers 

education.  ^-^^^  tradesmen;   and  all  are  to  be  voters: 

they  should  be  educated  as  such,  instead  of  having  the 
education  that  was  established  hundreds  of  years  ago 
for  priests,  and  in  nations  where  nobody  voted.  There 
is  knowledge  enough  that  can  be  useful  in  the  factory, 


§449^]  The  Young;  Ediication.  •     519 

the  farm,  the  counting-house  and  at  the  primary  meeting, 
in  debates  with  neighbors,  and  at  the  polls,  to  take  up 
many  times  the  years  that  our  boys  can  give  to  school. 

The  European  cities  have  a  much  wiser  policy  than 
ours  in  this  regard.  They  usually  have  excellent  schools 
to  teach  the  arts  most  generally  practiced  in  the  cities — 
everything  from  ship-building  to  carpet-designing,  de- 
pending on  what  the  city  is  interested  in. 
449  (d),  Practical  ^^^  °^  course  it  IS  not  desirable  that  a 
education  no  foe  boy  sliould  grow  Up  merely  a  business  and 
0  poe  ry,  political  machine.     But  a  man  who  knows 

any  subject  well  will  find  the  borders  of  it  touching 
everything  else.  Every  science  and  every  art  are  fringed 
with  poetry:  read  Kipling's  "MacAndrew's  Hymn"  and 
Patrick  Henry's  speeches. 

As  to  the  girls,  most  of  them  are  to  keep  the  homes 
and  rear  the  families  of  mien  of  moderate  means :  so  it  is 
absurd  to  educate  most  of  them  for  ornaments  of  the 
homes  of  the  rich.  If  there  is  no 'poetry  in  the  kitchen 
and  the  nursery,  there  is  no  poetry  in  Burns  or  in 
Rafael's  Madonnas. 

449  (e).  Pauper-  In  some  places  there  has  been  a  tendency 
ization,  ^Q   expand   education  into  pauperization. 

Beginning  very  sensibly  with  medical  care  to  prevent 
contagion,  and  sending  public  vehicles  for  the  children 
in  bad  weather,  to  prevent  colds,  thev  have  gone  on 
to  providing  them  with  thick  shoes,  then  with  thick 
clothes  (or  thin  ones  as  needed),  and  then  with  lunches  ; 
and  at  the  present  rate,  we  can  look  for  schemes  to  pro- 
vide them  with  watches  to  tell  when  it  is  school  time. 

The  objection  to  providing  the  poor  ones  with  at 
least  the  necessary  things,  is  that  while  it  would  do 
good  in  a  few  instances,  it  would  do  harm  in  more. 
Already  parents  perfectly  able  to  take  care  of  their  chil- 
dren, are,  as  experience  proves,  only  too  ready  to  throw 
the  burden  on  the  state;  and  the  whole  scheme  shows 
itself  to  be  one  of  those,  like  socialism  and  the  money 
tricks,  for  national  pauperization.  As  soon  as  the  state 
undertakes  to  go  beyond  taking  care  of  defective  paupers, 
those  who  can  earn  a  living  begin  to  depend  on  the 


520  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  449  e 

state,  to  shirk  work,  to  seek  to  rob  by  taxation,  and  so 
to  choke  off  benevolence. 

Where  the  matter  has  been  left  to  private  initiative, 
much  has  been  done  to  render  poor  children  fit  to  go  to 
school.  In  Paris  and  several  other  large  French  cities 
there  are  societies  of  benevolent  people  called  "school 
treasuries"  {caisscs  dcs  ecolcs)  who  help  poor  children 
to  most  of  the  good  things  we  have  been  talking  about, 
and  many  more;  but  they  take  good  care,  as  our  Charity 
Organization  Societies  do  (and  as  no  government 
organization  will  in  our  time),  to  find  out  where  help 
should  be  given,  and  where  it  should  not;  and  not  to  let 
the  other  children  know  who  the  dependent  ones  are. 
But  all  that  is  voluntary  benevolence,  not  the  act  of  a 
lot  of  American  political  heelers  spending  money  seized 
by  mere  brute  force  of  votes. 

Those  French  societies,  however,  are  not  entirely  sup- 
ported by  private  benevolence :  the  cities  subsidize  them , 
as  some  American  cities  subsidize  libraries , ' '  settlements ' ' , 
etc.  (a  doubtful  pohcy) ;  but  at  bottom  they  are  volun- 
tary, both  in  their  workers  and  in  their  subscriptions. 

A.r,  ,t.  c*  *  •  The  question  whether  education  itself  is 

^H9  (f).  state  s  11       •/;  •      ^1  •  r  ^ 

responsibility  well  witliiu  the  proviucc  ot  government,  or 
established.  should  be  left  entirely  to  private  initiative, 

may  perhaps  be  considered  as  having  passed  beyond  the 
area  of  discussion.  There  is  no  sense  in  gainsaying  the 
course  of  evolution — it  has  moved  education,  along  with 
charity,  from  the  church  to  the  state.  That  the  govern- 
ment ought  to  supply  elementary  education  for  those 
whose  parents  cannot  supply  it,  or  cannot  be  made  to, 
is  generally  admitted  by  all  but  some  members  of  one 
church.  That  one  church  wants  to  have  its  religious 
doctrines  impressed  in  education.  It  claims  that  as  the 
state  cannot  do  that  for  each  sect,  no  one  should  be 
oVjliged  to  pay  for  state  education  if  he  would  prefer  to 
educate  his  children  otherwise. 
^,-,  ,  „      ^  Religion,  however,  is  not  the  only  con- 

AA9  (g).  Parents        ■  ■,         J^  ■     .-  V,  i^u^ 

should  pay  when  sidcration  pomtmg  the  same  way.  ihe 
"'''*•  state  is  supplying  education  without  cost 


§  450]  T^^  Young;  Education.  521 

to  children  whose  parents  are  able  to  supply  it.  All 
the  arguments  hold  against  it  which  hold  against  social- 
ism; moreover,  proper  education  is  the  most  difficult, 
delicate  and  expensive  work  human  beings  have  to  do ; 
government,  especially  in  America,  has  vastly  more  to 
do,  of  even  much  coarser  work,  than  it  can  do  well; 
hence  many  parents  prefer  private  schools,  and  claim 
that  they  themselves  should  not  be  taxed  to  educate, 
in  the  public  schools,  children  of  other  parents  who 
are  able  to  pay  the  full  cost. 

But  as  everybody  should  pay  for  those  whose  parents 
cannot,  a  practical  division  could  be  made  by  having 
taxpayers  who  send  their  children,  pay  for  them  di- 
rectly, and  by  having  the  other  children  paid  for  out 
of  the  taxes.  This  would  still  make  the  taxpayers  edu- 
cate the  children  of  the  poor.  This  is  done  in  Great 
Britain.  All  children  must  be  paid  for.  Those  whose 
parents  cannot  pay,  are  paid  for  by  the  Guardians  of 
the  Poor.  Pains  are  taken,  as  by  the  French  societies, 
to  prevent  the  charity  pupils  being  identified.  The  Hol- 
land system  is  somewhat  similar. 

450.  The  higher  So   much   as   to   elementary   education, 

education.  '\;\7'g   have   already  touched  upon   govern- 

ment and  the  higher  education,  when  we  spoke  of  the 
education  that  most  boys  and  girls  need.  To  give  the 
higher  education  to  the  ordinary  run  of  minds,  even  if 
they  could  assimilate  it,  is  as  great  foll}^  as  to  train 
ordinary  horses  for  racing.  But  tho  the  state  needs  all 
its  best  minds  at  their  best,  badly  enough  to  well  afford 
to  educate  them,  it  is  very  certain  that  the  state  is  not 
the  best  agency  to  educate  them  to  their  best.  More- 
over, after  the  state  has  got  them  through  the  grammar 
school — certainly  through  the  high  school,  those  wor- 
thy of  farther  education  can  be  trusted  to  find  the  rest 
of  the  way  themselves:  there  is  money  waiting  in  all 
the  colleges  for  poor  students  who  have  the  pluck  and 
talent  to  make  their  higher  training  worth  while. 

Besides  waste  and  pauperization,  supplying  the  higher 
education  is   ordinarily  too   delicate  work  for  govern- 


52  2  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§4500 

ment.  When  so  many  of  the  leading  universities  are 
450  fa;  Not  well  I'^^'Ving  trouble  to  find  fit  presidents,  we 
conducted  by  hardly  want  the  choice  restricted  to  men 

political  puns.  ^-^j^  political  pulls.  While  paternal  Ger- 
many is  sometimes  said  to  have  the  finest  universi- 
ties in  the  world,  the  statement  is  open  to  some  ques- 
tion. Kaiser  Wilhelrn  has  caused  the  dismissal  of  more 
than  one  professor  whose  doctrines  he  did  not  like ;  but 
despite  that,  in  his  universities  the  instruction  is  not 
paid  for  by  the  government,  or  even  prescribed  by  it 
to  the  same  extent  as  in  our  American  state  universi- 
ties. On  the  contrary,  the  students  sit  under  what  pro- 
fessors they  please,  and  the  professors  are  largely  paid 
by  the  fees  of  the  students  attending  their  courses, 
instead  of  by  fixed  salaries  out  of  a  general  fund,  as 
in  nearly  all  our  universities. 

At.r^,i.,  Ti,    t  ^■         It    is    very  hard    to    tell    whether    the 

450  (b).  Tlie  state,  r  i     .  •  .  ■> 

the  church,  the  coursc  ot  cvolution  sccms  toward  or  away 
philanthropist.  f j-Qm  government  providing  the  higher  edu- 
cation: the  conditions  are  very  mixed,  especially  in 
Europe.  In  American  experience,  some  question  may 
arise  between  the  state  universities  and  the  denomi- 
national universities,  and  more  can  arise  between  the 
state  universities  and  the  private  undenominational 
universities.  This  cannot  be  entirely  due  to  circum- 
stances: Harvard  and  Yale  were  evolved  before  the 
state  universities,  but  Johns  Hopkins  and  Cornell  and 
Chicago  were  not. 

On  the  whole,  the  state  universities  have  borne  up 
wonderfully  under  the  usual  danger  of  interference  by 
ignorant  and  selfish  politicians.  Speaking  generally, 
they  flourish  best  in  comparatively  new  regions.  That 
suggests,  of  course,  that  until  a  community  has  pro- 
gressed far  enougli  in  wealth,  culture  and  philanthropy  to 
build  up  great  universities  on  foundations  independent 
of  the  state,  it  seems  on  the  whole  very  fortunate  to 
have  the  state  do  what  it  can  to  remedy  the  deficiency. 
But  that  should  not  be  taken  as  a  finality  in  a  new  com- 
munity, and  still  less  is  it  jjroved  ideal  in  an  old  one. 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

GENERAL    CONCLUSIONS    ON    THE    SPHERE    OF 
GOVERNMENT. 

This  is  about  all  we  have  time  to  consider  in  detail 
regarding  government's  promotion  of  the  general  con- 
venience. Now,  at  the  cost  of  some  repetition  (which 
the  pressing  importance  of  the  subject  may  justify)  let 
us  sum  up. 

The  supplying  of  conveniences  by  government  appears 
to  be  a  natural  evolution,  being,  on  the  whole,  con- 
siderably farther  advanced  in  the  highly  evolved  nations 
than  in  others.  The  objects  first  coming  under  govern- 
ment care  are  generally  the  natural  monopolies — like 
streets  and  roads,  with  the  rails  and  pipes  that  maybe 
laid  in  them;  and  other  matters  too  large  for  indi- 
viduals, or,  in  some  cases,  for  private  corporations. 
Street  railways,  waterworks,  lighting  works  have  all 
been  carried  out  by  private  enterprise,  but  as  they  are 
naturally  monopolies,  they  have  tended  to  become  ex- 
tortionate, and  the  communities  have  sometimes  been 
driven  to  assume  them  in  self-defence:  even  the  steam 
railroads  have  needed  legislative  regulation  of  rates. 

Yet  there  has  been  grave  doubt  of  the  wisdom  of 
government's  providing  anything  but  national  defence 
and  the  protection  of  rights.  From  very 
and'coTiect'ivi'sm'!'"  early  times,  this  has  been  perhaps  the 
most  prominent  question  dividing  stu- 
dents of  government.  Yet  there  is  a  growing  realiza- 
tion that  when  wise  men  differ,  both  are  apt  to  be 
right.  Aristotle,  the  first  systematic  writer  on  politics, 
himself  took  both  sides.     Those  who  have  held  what 

523 


524  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  451 

is  sometimes  called  the  restriction  theory,  are  finding 
it  harder  and  harder  to  draw  the  line.  They  have 
about  all  admitted  the  necessity  of  government  money, 
mails,  roads,  harbors,  lighthouses,  surveys,  almshouses,, 
health  boards  and  many  other  things;  and  have  thought 
it  well  that  government  should  provide  that  no  one 
need  starve  or  freeze,  or  even  go  grossly  ignorant  or 
dirty. 

The  main  objections  urged  against  government  under- 
taking so  many  things,  have  been,  first,  that  people 
helped  too  much  by  government,  lose  the  tendency  and 
the  ability  to  help  themselves;  second,  that  the  more 
government  has  to  do — the  more  money  it  has  to  spend, 
the  more  danger  of  its  becoming  corrupt  and  tyrannical ; 
and  third,  that  even  where  fairly  honest,  it  is  apt  to  be 
unprogressive,  obstructive  and  expensive.  On  the  first 
objection,  it  is  to  be  said  that  there  is  very  little  experi- 
ence to  learn  from:  governments  have  not  any\\'here 
been  doing  most  of  these  things  long,  and  some  of  the 
governments  that  have  done  most  of  them,  have  long 
been  doing  other  things,  such  as  keeping  up  a  very 
rigorous  and  minute  police  control,  which  would  alone 
account  for  any  lack  of  independence  there  may  be 
among  their  peoples. 

The  situation  of  the  leading  countries  in  these  re- 
spects looks  paradoxical.  We  have  our  merits  as  a 
nation,  and  so  far  we  have  municipalized  least  among 
the  great  nations.  Up  to  about  1885,  when  railroads, 
pawnshops,  hospitals  and  schools  had  been  the  main 
conveniences  cared  for  by  government,  the  order  of 
the  other  nations  in  degree  of  municipalization,  prob- 
ably would  have  been  Germany,  France  and  Great 
Britain.  But  more  recently  the  increase  of  municipal- 
ized street  railways,  water,  gas,  electricity  and  poor- 
man's  homes,  has  probal)ly  put  Great  Britain,  espe- 
cially Scotland,  at  the  head;  and  the  independence 
452.  MunicipaHza-  ^^^  initiative  of  these  various  peoples 
tion  increases  with  stand  in  about  the  same  order  with  the 
c"rSe^"  with'poiic'o  municipalization  of  pubHc  works.  With 
control.  reference  to   minute  police  control,  these 


§  452  <3]  The  Sphere  of  Government.  525 

countries  would  probably  stand  in  the  reverse  order. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  municipalizing  so  many 
things  has  done  any  harm  to  the  character  of  the 
people,  but  it  is  early  yet  to  judge. 

Now  as  to  the  second  objection— the  temptation  to 
corruption  and  tyranny.  It  is  hard  to  tell  what  experi- 
ence shows.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  Great  Britain  and 
452 ca;.  Increases   Germany,  where  they  have  probably  the 

with  good  local  1.11  .  ,1  •  . 

government.  bcst    local    governments,    there    is    most 

municipalization;  and  in  America,  where  we  have 
unquestionably  the  worst  local  governments,  there  is 
least  municipalization. 

Regarding  the  third  objection,  Professor  Meyer's  con- 
clusions and  the  others  given  in  the  same  connection, 
will  be  remembered,  and  there  seems  to  be  nothing  to 
controvert  them. 

The  English  experience  seemed  all  one  way,  up  to 
the  late  nineties,  when,  as  we  have  seen  (400  h),  a  great 
reaction  set  in  which  was  overwhelming  in  the  elections 
of  1906.  Perhaps  reaction  may  only  be  needed  to  cor- 
rect abuses  incidental  to  new  experience,  and  perhaps 
municipalization  may  progress  all  the  more. 

But  as  between  good  government  and  municipaliza- 
tion, probably  both  are  cause,  and  both  effect.  There 
do  seem  to  be  some  faint  indications  (tho  far  from 
enough  to  prove  anything)  that  the  more  government 
has  to  do  for  the  people,  the  more  likely  are  the  people 
to  take  care  that  it  shall  be  done  right  (387,  389  /, 
392  c). 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  has  recently  been  a  great 
increase  in  the  number  of  things  done  by  government, 
and  a  widening  of  the  field  allowed  to  government  by 
the  restrictionist  philosophers. 

While  these  two  things  have  been  increasing,  there 
has  been  an  increase  in  a  third  thing  which  may  accovmt 
for  increase  in  the  first  two — the  art  of  government  has, 
on  the  whole,  been  growing.  The  conclusion,  then, 
would  seem  to  be  that,  as  we  have  so  often  said  before, 
what  government  can  wisely  attempt,  depends  on  the 
government.     The  municipal  governments  of  England 


526  TJic  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  452  a 

can  wisely  do  things  that  the  municipal  governments 
of  the  United  States  cannot;    and  those  of  the  United 
States  can  wisely  do  things  that  those  of  Turkey  cannot. . 
453.  Necessary       If  everybody  needs  a  thing,  that  is  no  sign 
''""'^s-  that  government   should   supply  it  when 

people  can  supply  themselves.  Everybody  needs  food, 
clothing  and  shelter:  yet  we  have  seen  abundant  reason 
why  government  should  not  supply  them  to  those  who 
can  supply  themselves. 

It  may  be  asked  whether,  if  government  were  to  supply 
them,  and  make  people  pay  for  them,  the  pauperization 
objection  would  come  in;  and  whether,  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  the  big  industry  cheapens  product,  govern- 
ment could  not,  by  doing  it  all,  do  it  enormously  cheaper 
than  it  is  done  now.  But  the  big  industry  does  not 
yio,  ,  rff  *■  necessarily  cheapen  product,  nu/V55  ^7  u'or^.!.' 
industri/  requires  itudcr  Competition :  Only  then  will  all  poor 
competition.  management  be  weeded  out,  and  prices  kept 

down.  If  favoritism  appoints  poor  management  under 
competition,  it  will  be  weeded  out:  because  the  best 
competitors  will  inevitably  drive  the  poorest  out  of 
business.  That  may  be  hard  on  the  poorest  com- 
petitors, but  not  as  hard  as  it  is  on  the  whole  community 
for  them  to  stay  in. 

We  may  grant,  then,  that  universal  demand  for 
a  thing  that  can  be  svipplied  by  competition,  is  not  a 
reason  why  government  should  supply  it,  even  if  the 
consumers  pay  for  it.  But  regarding  things  that 
cannot  be  supplied  under  competition — the  natural 
monopolies,  the  argument  is  entirely  different.  Tho 
^c.A,  »  •  ,        the  government  would  not  have  competi- 

Ab3(b),  Mainly         ^•^,  ,-,,  j  xj 

determined  by  tiou  to  Stimulate  good  management  and 
natural  monopoly,  cheapness,  private  control  would  not  eitlier ; 
and  private  control  would  Jiave  more  inducement  to 
keep  prices  up :  therefore  there  seems  a  chance  that 
an  ideal  government,  when  attained,  might  manage  as 
well  as  private  control,  and  would  supply  more  cheaply. 
But  even  the  ideal  government  sliould  charge,  because, 
as  not  everybody  needs  the  product  of  all  the  natural 
monopolies,  people  should  pay  in  proportion  to  what 


§  453  <^]  ^^"^  Sphere  of  Government.  527 

they  use;  and  they  can  only  do  that  direct,  not  in 
the  way  of  taxes.  Yet  people  do  not  pay  only  as  they 
use  them,  for  roads,  bridges,  streets  and  street  lights, 
museums  and  parks.  But  they  do  pay  as  used,  for  most 
ferries,  some  bridges,  postage,  car-fare,  water  and 
domestic  gas   and   electricity. 

453  re;.  Tax  for  They  pretty  often  pay  for  water  in  the 
commodities  uni-  way  of  taxcs,  but  there  is  a  reason  why 
charge  for  ot'iiers  they  should :  for  everybody  nccds  it.  Tho 
"*"*^'''  they  do  not  pay  for  each  gallon  when  de- 

livered, as  they  do  for  each  postage-stamp:  in  a  great 
many  places  they  do  not  even  pay  by  meter;  but 
where  they  do  not,  they  generally  pay  by  the  number 
of  outlets,  or  the  size  of  buildings,  or  some  other  pro- 
portional adjustment. 

There  is  much  agitation  for  providing  not  only  water 
but  many  other  things — even  street-railway  fares,  and 
for  that  matter,  steam-railway  fares,  free  to  everybody. 
It  begins  with  agitation  for  low  fares,  and  then  grows 
to  demand  for  free  transit  for  "Labor"  to  and  from 
work ;  and  so  becomes  really  of  the  same  piece  with  the 
agitation  for  making  lunches  and  clothing  free  to  school 
children,  and  in  fact,  everything  free  to  everybody. 
Nothing  could  be  more  desirable,  if  there  were  any 
way  of  producing  things  without  material,  plant  and 
labor;  but  there  seems  no  way  of  getting  them  free. 
Yet  the  non-taxpayer,  of  course,  wants  to  increase 
the  cheap  things  and  the  free  things  provided  by 
government,  and  cares  nothing  for  the  taxes  necessary 
to  do  it. 

There  is  no  fatal  objection  to  government  supplying 
"free",  matters  of  natural  monopoly,  that  virtually 
everybody  uses,  like  roads,  streets  and  street  lights, 
and  a  few  other  natural  monopolies,  like  some  bridges, 
which,  tho  many  people  use  seldom,  are  of  the  greatest 
importance  when  needed,  and  which  could  not  pay  for 
the  expense  and  trouble  of  collecting  fares.  Govern- 
ment should  also  care  for,  and  collect  for  the  use  of, 
important  natural  monopolies  which  are  of  frequent, 
tho  not  universal  use.     This,  of  course,  provided  the 


528  The  Promotion  of  Convenience.  [§  453  c 

state  of  politics  will  enable  government  to  manage  them 
without  undue  corruption. 

454.  The  funda-  The  whole  question  is  whether  the  people 
mental  question.  have  the  political  capacity  to  secure  the 
profits  of  monopoly  facilities  for  themselves,  and  use 
more  of  the  profits  than  private  owners  are  apt  to,  for 
keeping  the  facilities  up  to  the  mark. 

As  to  whether  this  has  yet  been  done  anywhere,  the 
testimony,  as  we  have  seen,  is  quite  conflicting;  but 
there  is  little  conflict  in  the  testimony  that  it  has  not 
been  done  under  universal  suffrage;  and  the  weight  of 
testimony  seems  almost  equally  strong  that  on  the  whole 
it  has  been  best  done  in  Germany,  where  the  municipal 
suffrage  is  most  in  the  hands  of  the  ablest  people  (426  c). 
But  in  Germany,  while  the  street-railway  fares,  for  in- 
stance, are  often  but  from  a  third  to  a  half  of  ours,  with 
a  commutation  system  besides,  generally  deficits  have 
had  to  be  made  up  from  the  taxes.  But  people  must 
pay  for  things  or  be  pauperized ;  and  where  there  is  not 
a  natiiral  monopoly  to  make  competition  difficult,  they 
would  get  them  better  and  cheaper  under  private  com- 
petition than  from  government.     So  far  as  government 

455.  Government  ^igh^  try  to  Supply  them,  just  so  far  the 
service  outside  of  stimulus  of  competition  which  has  evolved 
iz'mg^to  peopie^""^^ '  civilization,  would  be  withdrawn,  the  essen- 
and  officers.  ^{qI  features  of  civilization  would  begin  to 
disappear,  and  we  would  start  back  toward  a  condition 
of  status  and  savagery. 

To  sum  up  our  summary :  there  appears  to  be  a  plain 
line  where  the  best  government  must  ultimately  stop — 
just  where  it  will  interfere  with  private  competition  and 
the  rewards  of  Ability,  both  of  which  stimulate  Ability 
to  provide  goods  and  facilities  in  greater  variety,  reli- 
ability and  cheapness  than  political  management  could. 
And  it  is  most  important  to  remember  our  oft -repeated 
lesson  that  the  more  power  government  officers  have  to 
do  things  for  the  people,  the  more  power  they  have  to 
do  things  for  themselves;  and  in  any  civilization  yet 
evolved,  officials  are  apt  to  use  such  powers  for  their 
own  profit,  and  to  the  robbery  of  the  people. 


BOOK   III. 

TAXATION. 

CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

GENERAL    CONSIDERATIONS    ON    TAXATION. 

A  fundamental  essential  to  both  general  functions  of 
government — protecting  rights  and  (with  due  caution) 
promoting  convenience,  still  remains  for  us  to  con- 
sider. It  is  raising  the  money  to  pay  expenses. 
456.  Taxes  not  the  Taxes  are  not  the  government's  only 
only" source  of  means  of  Securing  money.  But  they  are 
'"^^®""^'  the  only  ones  we  can  consider  in  detail. 

In  addition  to  them,  a  little  of  its  income  comes  (I)  from 
sales — of  public  land  for  instance,  or  of  monopolized 
products — like  tobacco  in  France  and  Italy,  tho  that 
is  really  a  form  of  taxation;  (II)  from  fines:  in  bar- 
barous times  and  places  this  is  an  important  and  much- 
abused  source  of  revenue;  (III)  from  fees  of  sundry 
officers,  and  (IV)  from  assessments  laid  on  property 
for  neighboring  improvements,  such  as  streets,  sewers, 
parks,  etc.  But  these  all  amount  to  little  compared 
with  the  revenue  from  taxation. 

Tho  raising  revenue  is  of  course  merely  incidental 
to  the  main  functions  of  government,  we  are  by  no 
means  to  conclude  that  it  is  less  important  than  the 
others.     It  does  more  to  make  history  than  any  other: 

529 


530  Taxation.  [§  457 

457  I  t  t  d  questions  of  taxation  have  probably  done 
importance  of  more  to  cause  civil  wars  and  to  overthrow 
the  subject.  empires,    than    all    other    agencies    com- 

bined. A  few  instances  among  many  are  the  wars  in 
England  under  the  Stuarts  (tho  it  is  a  frequent  mis- 
take to  attribute  them  mainly  to  religious  differences), 
our  war  of  separation  from  England,  and  the  French 
revolution.  That  revolution  overthrew  the  French 
monarchy,  and  bad  taxation  rotted  out  the  Roman 
empire.  Even  to  our  own  civil  war  of  186 1-5  the 
question  of  "protection"  contributed  not  a  little. 

And  yet  young  people  generally  regard  questions  of 
taxation  as  dry  and  uninteresting,  probably  because 
they  have  never  felt  the  shoe  pinch  themselves:  they 
do  not  realize  that  they  are  themselves  paying  many 
taxes  in  enhanced  prices  of  the  things  that  they  buy 
with  their  pocket-money  or  allowances,  and  that  those 
sums  are  probably  less  than  they  would  be  if  it  were 
not  for  the  taxes  paid  by  the  persons  supplying  them. 
Still  less  do  young  people  realize,  if  they  are  restricted 
in  their  amusements,  or  even  in  their  food  and  clothes, 
that  taxation  has  anything  to  do  with  it.  What 
taxation  has  to  do  with  it,  is  just  what  we  are  going  to 
wade  through  many  pages  to  explain.  It  cannot  be 
put  in  a  sentence. 

It  is  plain  enough  that  one  cannot  spend  in  amuse- 
ments, food  and  clothing,  what  is  spent  in  taxes;  but 
it  is  not  so  plain,  tho  it  is  as  true,  that  a  very  large 
part  of  what  is  spent  in  taxes,  especially  in  the  United 
States — more  especially  here  than  in  England,  France 
or  Germany — might  just  as  well  be  spent  in  amuse- 
ments, food  and  clothing,  and  the  government  be  all 
the  better  for  it.  I  hope  that  is  paradoxical  enough 
to  arouse  a  curiosity  that  may  help  us  in  our  "many 
pages". 

Now  what  makes  taxation  so  important?  Many  men 
458.  Everybody  never  have  occasion  for  government's  pro- 
pays  taxes.  tection  from  violence  or  robbery,  but  sub- 
stantially every  man  is  taxed,  whether  he  knows  it  or 


§460]  General  Considerations.  531 

not.  Taxation  takes,  on  an  average,  one  twelfth  of 
the  earnings  of  each  American  citizen,  and  this  even 
if  he  owns  no  property  to  be  taxed.  He  is  taxed 
if  he  eats  sugar  or  wears  wool:  they  are  taxed,  and 
he  has  to  pay  more  for  them  on  that  account.  The 
same  is  true,  directly  or  indirectly,  of  most  other 
things  that  he  uses — some  authorities  think  of  every- 
thing that  he  uses,  tho  he  does  not  pay  on  one  thing 
in  a  thousand  directly  to  the  tax-collector;  in  fact, 
comparatively  few  men  ever  pay  taxes  directly  at  all. 
Yet,  as  we  shall  see  more  fully  later,  it  would  be  a 
great  stimulus  to  good  citizenship  if  everybody  did: 
for  then  everybody  would  realize  the  interest  that  he 
has  in  economical  government — would  have  that  very 
realization  whose  general  absence  from  the  young 
student  has  been  deplored.  We  will  look  later  into 
the  question  of  how  taxes  are  shifted  from  the  man 
who  first  pays  them,  on  to  others. 

459.  Rates  in  The  American  pays  about  eight  and  a 
different  countries.  1-^alf  per  Cent,  of  his  income  in  taxes;  the 
Belgian  a  little  over  six;  the  Englishman  about  seven 
and  three  quarters;  but  the  Frenchman,  with  his  big 
standing  army,  eleven;  and  the  Italian  lately,  with  his 
wasteful  colonial  fighting  and  domestic  discords  and 
scandals,  fifteen  or  sixteen.  This  estimate  includes  all 
taxation — local,  state  and  national.  In  even  dollars, 
Mulhall  says,  the  American  has  lately  paid  about  15; 
the  German,  17;  the  Frenchman,  20;  the  Briton,  29; 
the  Australian,  32;  and  the  New-Zealander,  45.  The 
last  three  are  spending  enormously  on  municipal  opera- 
tion. For  national  taxation,  Mr.  Atkinson  estimates 
("Facts  and  Figures,"  1904)  that  the  American  pays 
about  $6.50  per  person,  while  Great  Britain,  France, 
Germany  and  the  Netherlands  pay  from  $12  to  $18. 

460.  Methods  Of  course  the  way  taxes  are  collected 
influence  rate  largely  determines  the  expenses  of  collec- 
tion. The  difference  in  the  systems  of  taxation  prob- 
ably makes  more  than  the  differences  of  percentage  of 


532  Taxation.  [§  460 

income  taken,  against  us  as  compared  with  Belgium 
and  England:  for  with  our  ordinary  small  military 
expenses  (omitting  the  pension  scandal  and  the  Span- 
ish and  Philippine  difficulties)  and  our  colossal  re- 
sources, a  wise  system  of  taxation  ought  to  make 
our  rate  far  the  lightest  in  the  world. 

Aside  from  the  syst-em  of  taxation  affecting  the  rate, 
it  affects  general  well-being  in  other  ways,  almost  with- 
460  ra;.  and  mor-  o^^  limit.  A  bad  tax  system  is  a  power- 
aiity,  prosperity,    f^l  foe  of  popular  morality — some  people 

peace,  stable  gou-     ,  i  •     i       ,  •.  ,  ^    1         tt-  f 

eminent,  and  euen    thmk    the    mOSt    pOWCriul.        YOU    Can    tax 

health  and  life,  flood  or  pestilence  into  a  community,  or 
you  can  tax  them  away.  You  can  tax  an  industry  out 
of  existence,  and  throw  the  workmen  into  idleness  and 
want;  on  the  other  hand,  you  can,  in  a  sense,  tax  an 
industry  into  existence — by  taxing  a  competing  industry 
out.  How  taxes  can  make  and  unmake  industries, 
produce  revolutions,  and  rot  empires,  is  perhaps  fairly 
plain,  but  that  remark  about  flood  and  pestilence  may 
need  explanation.  There  was  once  a  tax  on  quinine 
that  limited  its  use  by  the  poor;  and  our  high  tariff 
has  kept  out  Canadian  lumber  to  a  degree  that  is 
stripping  woods  from  many  places  where  they  are 
needed  to  prevent  the  snow  from  melting  too  fast  in 
Spring,  and  flooding  the  rivers.  Raising  the  revenue 
from  improper  sources  has  brought  these  evils  upon  us, 
and  raising  it  from  proper  sources  would  tax  the  evils 
away.    ♦ 

Taxation  affects  morality  by  tempting  people  into 
dishonest  and  even  violent  practices  to  avoid  it.  That 
is  not  simply  an  objection  to  all  taxation.  As  we  shall 
see,  some  forms  of  taxation  tempt  to  dishonesty  much 
more  than  others.  Adam  Smith  says  that  bad  tax- 
laws  "tempt  persons  to  violate  [them]  who  are  fre- 
quently incapable  of  violating  those  of  natural  justice, 
and  who  would  have  been  in  every  respect  excellent 
citizens,  had  not  those  laws  made  that  a  crime  which 
Nature  never  meant  to  be  so". 

Taxes  affect  the  movements  of  Capital  and  Ability. 


§  462]  General  Considerations.  553 

If  you  happen  to  be    a    'socialist  or   a    communist  or 
AGO  (b).  and  move- Vop^^^st,  or  any  other  sort  of    an   "ist" 
ments  of  Capital     opposcd    to   accumulations   of   Capital  or 
"  ^'  the  leadership  of  Ability,  3^ou  can  (if  you 

have  your  own  way)  tax  them  away  from  any  com- 
munity. On  the  other  hand,  if  you  are  so  little  of 
that  sort  of  a  "friend  of  humanity"  that  you  think 
Capital  and  Abihty  good  things  to  have,  you  can 
attract  them  to  your  state  by  tax-laws  wiser  than 
those  of  other  states.  To  attract  Capital  and  Ability 
permanently,  laws  must  be  wise:  because  the  attempt 
to  attract  them  by  unwisely  favoring  them  at  the 
expense  of  the  poor  and  stupid,  will  be  certain,  in  the 
long  run,  under  free  institutions,  to  awaken  reactions, 
like  those  in  the  granger  states  in  the  last  decade  of 
the  nineteenth  centur^^  which  drove  Capital  and 
leadership  awav,  and  left  people  starving  for  lack  of 
them. 

461.  Taxation  and  The  money  for  government  expenses 
civilization.  j;^a.s  by  no  means  always  come  out  of  the 
people.  The  primitive  idea  generally  was  to  get  as 
much  as  possible  out  of  the  stranger,  and  that  idea  is 
not  quite  dead  yet.  The  great  nations  of  antiquity 
paid  a  considerable  share  of  their  expenses  from  plun- 
dered provinces ;  Arab  tribes  from  time  immemorial 
have  levied  tribute  on  caravans;  the  robber  barons  of 
Germany  taxed  the  traveler;  even  down  to  Spain  and 
Cuba,  not  to  speak  of  the  United  States,  Porto  Rico  and 
the  Philippines,  nations  have  milked  their  colonies; 
and  one  of  the  arguments  of  high-tariff  advocates  to-day 
(tho  a  disputed  one),  is  that  the  stranger  pays  the  tax. 

When  tax-money  cannot  be  got  from  the  stranger, 
but  must  come  out  of  the  people,  the  best  method  of 
raising  it  depends,  like  all  other  questions  of  government, 
upon  the  character  of  the  people.  The  most  intelligent 
knowledge  comes  from  comparison.     With  a  primitive 

462.  Opposite  people,  in  places  like  early  Russia  or 
metiiods  illustrated.  Turkey,  an  approved  way  has  been  simply 


534  Taxation.  [§  462 

to  tell  each  man  his  share,  being  sure  to  make  it  big 
enough,  then  to  get  three  or  four  prominent  delinquent 
taxpayers,  jab  a  sharp  pole  upward  through  the  body 
of  each,  and  plant  them  in  a  row  where  every  one 
is  sure  to  see  them.  Such  an  evidence  of  the  prompt- 
ness and  thoroughness  of  the  government,  inspires  a 
confidence  among  the  people  that  brings  in  the  taxes 
with  great  success. 

While  that  seems  a  very  simple  way,  it  might  not  be 
a  good  one  in  America,  tho  it  really  would  be  less  painful 
in  the  long  run  than  some  of  the  present  ways.  But 
the  people  fail  to  realize  that  fact,  and  would  be  apt 
to  embarrass  the  collectors. 

The  national  government's  settled  way,  up  to  the 
war  with  Spain,  and  the  way  that  we  are  rapidly 
returning  to,  as  the  war  is  becoming  paid  for,  was  just 
at  the  opposite  extreme  from  the  Turkish.  Instead  of 
impressing  the  matter  unpleasantly  on  the  people's  atten- 
tion, it  was  to  try  to  collect  the  taxes  without  people 
generally  knowing  anything  about  it — to  make  taxation 
unobserved, 

"  Like  the  bat  of  Indian  brakes 
Whose  pinions  fan  the  wound  it  makes." 

There  is  good  authority  for  that  plan.  The  great 
Colbert  said  that  the  true  way  was  to  tax  so  as  to 
pluck  the  most  feathers  with  the  least  squealing. 

463.  Direct  and  The  names  given  to  the  system  which 

indirect  taxes,  attempts  to  tell  each  citizen  clearly  just 
what  he  is  to  pay,  and  to  the  system  which  tries  to  get 
it  out  of  him  without  his  knowing  it,  are  Direct  and 
Indirect. 

Direct  taxes  are  those  which  are  paid  in  the  first 
instance  by  the  person  getting  the  benefit  of  the  thing 
taxed — such  as  those  on  real  estate,  accumulated 
property,  income,  inheritances  and  business  transactions, 
including  some  of  the  stamp-taxes. 

Indirect  taxes  are  those  paid  on  property  which  the 


§  463]  General  Considerations.  535 

payer  does  not  ordinarily  expect  to  use,  but  to  sell, 
and  whose  taxes  he  is  expected  to  add  in  the  price 
to  the  consumer.  These  also  include  many  stamp - 
taxes. 

The  person  on  whom  a  direct  tax  is  laid,  has  no 
choice  about  paying  it.     He  must  pay  or  be  sold  out. 

Sometimes  indirect  taxes  need  not  be  paid  before  the 
goods  are  sold,  the  goods  meanwhile  being  left  "in  bond  " 
under  government  control ;  and  nearly  always  the  con- 
sumer of  the  articles  taxed,  who  generally  has  to  pay 
the  indirect  taxes  in  the  price  of  the  articles,  can  do 
without  the  articles  if  he  sees  fit,  or  substitute  some- 
thing not  taxed,  unless  everything  he  must  have  is 
taxed.  But  even  then,  he  can  do  without  taxed 
luxuries,  if  he  sees  fit. 

Not  every  tax  falls  into  one  of  these  categories  and 
not  into  the  other,  any  more  definitely  than  things 
generally  fall  exclusively  into  any  classes  that  human 
ingenuity  tries  to  put  them  into.  In  fact,  so  little  can 
a  legislator  foretell  whether  some  taxes  are  going  to 
prove  direct  or  indirect,  that  some  writers,  especially 
on  the  continent  of  Europe,  make  different  definitions, 
and  some  there,  and  even  here,  propose  that  the  terms 
shall  be  abandoned.  We  have  not  space  to  go  into  that ; 
we  may  as  well  stick  to  the  definition  we  have  started  on, 
and  try  to  understand  its  weak  points  as  well  as  its 
strong  ones.  To  illustrate:  when  a  man  lives  in  a  large 
house,  the  tax  he  pays  on  it  is  direct,  of  course.  But 

then  suppose  he  takes  boarders,  of  course  he  has  to 
charge  part  of  his  tax  to  them ;  and  the  part  paid  through 
him  by  the  boarders  is  indirect.  He  rents  his  whole 

house  to  somebody  else.  Of  course  he  has  to  get 
interest,  and  taxes  besides.  The  tax  then  has  become 
entirely  indirect,  if  his  tenant  really  pays  it,  as  in  effect 
he  probably  does,  tho  there  is  a  little  doubt  on  that 
subject,  which  we  will  touch  on  later.  Now  a  man 

imports  a  thousand  cigars,  expecting  to  charge  to 
customers  the  duty  imposed  by  the  tariff,  that  tax  is 
plainly  indirect.  But  a  traveler  brings  a  thousand 
cigars  which  he  expects  to  smoke  and  give  to  his  friends; 


536  Taxation.  [§463 

the  duty  he  pays  is  of  course  direct.  A  man  distils 
a  barrel  of  whiskey  and  pays  the  excise  tax,  which  he 
charges  to  his  customer;  the  tax  is  indirect.  He  con- 
cludes not  to  sell  the  barrel,  but  puts  it  in  his  own 
cellar;  the  tax  is  direct,  of  course.  A  druggist  puts 
an  eighth-of-a-cent  stamp  on  a  bottle  of  medicine;  the 
tax  is  indirect  if  he  charges  his  customer;  but  as  he 
cannot  well  charge  an  eighth  of  a  cent,  the  tax  is 
probably  direct.  If  it  is  a  two-cent  stamp,  he  prob- 

ably charges  it,  and  the  tax  is  indirect.  He  puts  a 
two-cent  stamp  on  a  bank  check.     The  tax  is  direct. 

464.  Shifting  We  have  at  least  seen  that  sometimes  a 

of  taxes.  "tax  that  seems  direct  can  be  shifted  on  to 

somebody  else,  and  that  he  sometimes  has  to  pay  for  it 
in  increased  proportions,  as  for  scamped  work  (228  6)  or 
for  cheap  money  (361)  or  for  the  maintenance  of  idle 
prisoners  (444  e).  Now  how  do  we  determine  whether 
a  tax  is  going  to  be  paid  by  the  person  on  whom  it 
is  first  laid,  or  passed  on  to  somebody  else.''  In  the 
same  way  (and  with  perhaps  about  the  same  cer- 
tainty, in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge)  that 
we  foretell  storms — by  studying  the  subject.  It  is 
simply  a  question  of  motion  and  friction.  M.  Thiers 
likened  the  diffusion  of  taxation  to  the  diffusion  of 
light,  but  he  forgot  that  light  is  not  subject  to  friction: 
the  motion  of  taxation  is:  for  tho  the  first  man  will 
pass  it  on  if  he  can,  the  later  men  will  prevent  him  if 
they  can.  S  metimes  one  side  will  win,  and  sometimes 
the  other.  Sometimes  the  payment  will  be  shared  more 
or  less  along  the  line:  for  instance,  the  drug  manufac- 
turers did  not  pay  for  stamps  for  the  Spanish-war  tax 
upon  such  patent  medicines  as  were  in  the  dealers'  hands 
when  the  tax  was  imposed:  the  dealers  put  them  on, 
and  sometimes  charged  them  to  their  customers,  and 
sometimes  did  not. 

Generally  speaking,  whether  the  person  on  whom  a 
tax  is  first  laid,  will  be  apt  to  pay  it  rather  than  shift 
it,  is  really  a  question  of  whether  it  is  going  to  cost 
the  producer  or  the  middlemen  more  than  the  tax  is 


§464^^]  General  Considerations.  537 

worth,  to  make  the  consumer  pay  it.  There  is  the 
natural  tendency  for  the  man  who  first  pays  it,  to 
shove  it  on  to  the  next  man,  and  so  on  to  the  con- 
sumer; but  generally  the  producer,  or  even  the  dealer, 
will  pay  the  tax  rather  than  advance  price  so  as  to 
curtail  his  market  to  a  degree  that  will  more  than  offset 
the  tax.  This  is  especially  the  case  where,  as  in  patent 
medicines,  for  instance,  there  is  a  usual  retail  price. 

There  is  a  broader  distinction  still,  as  to  which  in- 
direct taxes  will  be  shifted.  Those  that  consumers 
are  most  apt  to  pay,  are  of  course,  other  things  even, 
those  most  apt  to  be  shifted;  and  those  which  con- 
sumers are  most  apt  to  pay,  are  those  on  things  which 
everybody  must  have,  like  matches;  and  those  on 
things  which  the  rich  will  have,  like  champagne. 

When  the  producer  or  importer  really  pays  the  tax 
and  passes  it  forward,  as  it  were,  through  the  whole- 
saler and  the  retailer  to  the  consumer,  all  those  pec  pie 
naturally  try  to  get  a  profit  for  handling  it.  But  com- 
petition sometimes  leads  them  to  pay  the  tax  itself, 
instead  of  throwing  it  upon  the  consumer.  Yet  generally 
before  the  tax  was  imposed,  competition  has  brought 
the  less  able  producers'  profits  as  low  as  they  are  apt 
to  remain:  so  they  contain  no  margin  to  pay  a  tax. 
But  even  then,  the  able  producers  with  large  margins 
of  profit,  may  sometimes  pay  the  tax,  which  will  of 
course  drive  the  less  able  producers,  who  cannot  pay 
it,  out  of  business. 

AQ^  (a).  Need  of  Obviously,  everybody  ought  to  be  free 
free  competition,  -^q  compete  by  paying  a  tax  if  he  wants 
to,  rather  than  shift  it  to  his  customer.  This  is  vir- 
tually part  of  the  fact  that  all  should  be  able  to 
compete  in  prices,  both  for  their  own  sake  and  the 
public's.  One  very  important  principle  of  taxation 
springs  from  this  fact — that  all  competitors  should  be 
taxed  alike.  For  instance,  as  linen  and  cotton  compete, 
it  is  unfair  to  tax  linen  unless  you  tax  cotton,  or  cotton 
unless  you  tax  linen ;  so  it  is  unfair  to  tax  serges  unless 
you  tax  cheviots,  goatskins  unless  you  tax  calfskins; 
horses  unless  mules,  railroads  unless  steamboats,  rye  un- 


538  Taxation.  [§464  a 

less  oats,  and  so  on  through  all  competing  things.  Yet 
it  is  impossible  to  do  this  fairly:  each  thing  is  com- 
peted with  by  too  many  others — more  than  a  tax- 
law  can  follow:  therefore  taxation  should  be,  as  far  as 
practicable,  restricted  to  the  things  least  subject  to 
competition,  like  real  estate  and  franchises.  This  fact 
regarding  real  estate -and  franchises  is  very  important,, 
for  additional  reasons  which  will  appear  later. 

It  seems  generally  taken  for  granted  that  taxes  ought 
to  distribute  themselves  throughout  the  community, 
and  it  has  been  declared  that  they  will  so  distribute 
themselves,  until  they  are  finally  paid  by  the  consumer. 
But  it  has  also  been  declared  that  they  will  all  finally 
find  their  way  back  to  the  land,  because  everything 
has  its  origin  there.  In  fact,  pretty  much  every  con- 
ceivable shifting  has  been  declared  and  denied.  The 
truth  is  that  the  subject  is  so  enormously  complicated 
that  we  do  not  yet  really  know  much  about  it.  There 
is  a  widespread  feeling,  however,  that  a  given  amount 
of  taxes,  like  a  bump  or  a  blow,  does  less  harm  the  more 
widely  (and  therefore  thinly)  a  given  amount  of  con- 
cussion can  be  spread;  and,  as  we  shall  see,  it  is  certain 
that  almost  any  tax  is  spread  more  widely  than  at  first 
appears.  A  good  general  proof  of  this,  is  that,  other 
464  ft;.  Prices  things  even,  in  any  given  civihzed  nation, 
highest  where  the  priccs  of  Commodities  are  generally 
taxes  are  ig  es .  j-^^gi-^gg^-  -^^ere  taxes  are  highest — higher  in 
small  cities  than  in  the  country,  and  in  large  cities  than 
in  small  ones.  These  higher  prices  of  commodities 
represent  the  cost  of  the  streets,  lights,  etc.,  which 
make  the  commodities  easy  of  access  (and  therefore 
justify  keeping  a  large  variety),  and,  alas!  they  also 
represent  the  cost  of  the  political  corruption  which 
gathers  around  municipal  work. 

A  melancholy  proof  of  this  last  point,  Americans 
must  own  up  to:  New  York  is  probably  the  most 
expensive  city  in  the  world,  and  our  other  cities,  in 
proportion  to  their  sizes,  generally  follow  pretty  close 
on  its  heels. 


CHAPTER   XXXVII. 


INDIRECT    TAXES. 


Now  to  come  to  the  details  of  the  taxes  levied  by 
our  benevolent  national  government  in  the  manner  of 
our  amiable  friend  the  vampire.  The  principal  ones 
are  taxes  on  articles  manufactured  here, 
which  are  called  excise;  and  taxes  on 
imported  commodities,  called  duties,  the  whole  list  of 
duties  being  called  the  tariff. 

An  illustration  of  excise  is  in  the  fact  that  Scotch 
whiskey  smells  of  smoke.  Long  ago  the  British  govern- 
ment put  a  heavy  excise  tax  on  the  manufacture  of 
whiskey,  and  so  it  sold  for  a  very  high  price.  This  led 
many  people  into  making  it  secretly,  so  as  to  get  the 
high  price  without  paying  the  excise.  Many  of  these 
secret  stills  were  in  the  mountains  of  Scotland,  and 
Ireland  too ;  and  to  prevent  the  smoke  from  betraying 
them  to  the  excise  officers,  it  had  to  be  shut  in  and  con- 
densed on  the  premises,  and  some  of  it  used  to  get  into 
the  whiskey.  But  smoky  whiskey  is  made  by  well- 
known  distillers  now,  because  some  people  got  to  like 
it,  and  it  was  found  that  creosote,  which  is  a  name  for 
condensed  smoke,  has  some  good  medicinal  qualities. 
Since  the  civil-war  tax  was  put  on  whiskey,  there  have 
been  some  secret  mountain  stills  in  the  mountains  of 
Virginia,  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee.  There  are 
some  even  now,  and  even  in  New  York  City  now. 

Government  thinks  it  worth  while  to  collect  taxes  on 
such  little  stills  as  could  be  hid  in  the  mountains, 
because  if  they  did  not,  such  stills  would  be  sure  to 

539 


54°  Taxation.  [§  465 

increase  in  size  and  in  numbers,  and  sell  at  low  prices, 
so  as  to  make  it  impossible  for  the  lowland  stills,  which 
pay  the  taxes,  to  continue  doing  so.  It  has  been  more 
troublesome  to  collect  taxes  from  the  little  stills  than 
from  the  big  ones — not  only  to  find  the  little  stills,  but 
to  collect  the  taxes.  -The  distillers  have  often  murdered 
the  excisemen. 

Now  in  such  cases,  it  might  be  fair  to  suppose  that 
if  the  lawless  people  were  not  resisting  the  tax-gatherer, 
they  would  be  trying  to  make  money  in  some  other 
way  just  as  bad.  But  nevertheless  if  taxes  were  ar- 
ranged so  that  people  could  not  make  money  by  evad- 
ing them,  there  would  be  one  less  temptation  to  evil- 
doing. 

Excises  are  by  no  means  laid  on  the  liquor  traffic 
alone.  They  are  generally  laid  on  tobacco  the  world 
over.  During  our  civil  war  they  were  laid  on  almost 
all  kinds  of  production,  and  even  during  the  Spanish 
war  they  were  restored  on  many  drugs,  and  on  perfumes 
and  chewing-gum. 

They  are  burdensome  on  industry  and  commerce. 
Moreover,  they  are  constantly  tempting  manufacturers 
to  misrepresent  to  the  tax-collector  the  value  of  the 
goods  they  handle,  and  evade  the  taxes,  at  the  expense 
of  those  honest  enough  to  pay  them.  For  these  rea- 
sons they  were  taken  off  from  nearly  everything  but 
liquors  and  tobacco  as  soon  as  possible  after  the  civil 
war  and  the  Spanish  war.  Yet  it  would  not  do  to 
conclude,  from  the  objection  to  these  taxes,  that  such 
taxes  ought  never  to  be  levied.  There  is  likely  to  be 
some  good  in  methods  that  have  been  used  so  often. 
It  is  the  amount  of  the  tax  that  leads  to  the  misrep- 
resentation, smuggling  and  outlawry.  Such  taxes  are 
harmless  in  those  respects  when  not  large  enough 
to  make  it  very  profitable  to  evade  them. 
465  w.  raxes  may  Excises  havc  cvcn  a  good  side,  so  far 
limit  dangerous  as  they  kccp  the  Hquor  traffic  within 
pursuits.  bounds;  and  tariffs  have,  so  far  as  they 

prevent  illegitimate  foreign  competition.  Excises  have 
probably  done  more  good  in  regulating  the  liquor  traffic 


§  466  a]  Indirect  Taxes.  541 

than  they  have  done  harm  in  leading  to  ilHcit  dis- 
tilhng.  The  trouble  in  handling  the  liquor  traffic  has 
only  come  from  going  to  extremes,  and  disregarding 
the  facts  of  human  nature.  When  the  excise  on  manu- 
facturing has  been  reasonable,  it  has  been  collected 
without  trouble — that,  in  fact,  is  the  test  of  its  being 
reasonable;  and  on  saloons,  it  has  also  been  possible 
to  collect  license  taxes  high  enough  to  limit  the  num- 
ber, and  prevent  temptation  being  offered  to  the  weak 
at  every  turn. 

There  are  taxes  besides  those  on  distilling,  that  lead 
to  outlawry  and  murder.  Duties  have 
made  smugglers,  many  of  whom  were 
ready  for  any  crime;  and  where,  as  is  often  the  case, 
the  boundaries  between  countries  have  been  mountains, 
it  has  been  easy  for  the  smugglers  to  live  there  and  hide. 
They  have  grown  very  wild  and  lawless,  and  besides 
smuggling,  have  often  run  illicit  stills. 

Yet  duties  have  done  a  great  deal  of  good  to  offset 
this  evil.  By  increasing  the  expense  of  foreign  goods, 
466  ra;.  Encourage  they  enable  the  domestic  producer  to  com- 
home  production,  pg^g  ^^^^-^  them  morc  successfully.  That 
is  well  for  the  producer,  and  sometimes  for  the  con- 
sumer. While  he  has  a  right  to  buy  in  the  cheapest 
market,  the  home  market,  when  its  manufactures  are 
fairly  established,  is  naturally  the  cheapest  for  all 
goods  adapted  to  the  climate  and  resources  of  a 
country. 

In  new  countries,  and  sometimes  in  the  new  indus- 
tries of  old  countries,  a  tariff  even  on  goods  that  can 
be  produced  cheaper  at  home,  is  often  of  the  very 
greatest  use.  When,  under  either  of  these  circumstances, 
an  enterpriser  is  trying  to  establish  an  industry  that 
already  exists  in  another  country,  the  foreigner,  for 
the  sake  of  keeping  his  monopoly,  is  very  apt  to  sell 
even  below  what  his  goods  cost  him,  just  as  we  saw, 
when  we  were  considering  competition  and  trusts, 
that  people  often  do  in  other  situations  (149  c).  Then 
when  he  has  prevented  the  success  of  the  new  industry, 


542  Taxation.  [§  466  a 

of  course  he  can  return  to  high  prices,  and  is  apt  to  get 
unfairly  high  ones. 

But  when  the  foreigner  makes  prices  unfair,  tho  the 
home  producer  may  be  able  to  compete  with  him,  he 
will  not  want  to,  if  he  can  keep  the  tariff  high  enough 
to  shut  out  the  foreign  goods,  or  make  the  prices  of  them 
higher  than  his  own.  In  this  case  the  consumer  loses  the 
benefit  of  competition. 

There  is  often  another  consideration  besides  the 
establishment  of  young  industries,  making  a  high  tariff 
desirable.  A  nation  is  sometimes  put  to  it  as  a  measure 
466  rw.  Tariff  of  Self -defence — when  another  nation  lays 
""""*•  a  high  tariff  on  some  important  production 

of  the  first  nation,  and  seriously  disturbs  existing  indus- 
try, especially  when  such  a  step  is  taken,  as  it  too 
often  is,  from  mere  spite  and  desire  to  injure.  Then  a 
tariff  simply  becomes  a  weapon  of  war,  offensive  or 
defensive.  The  "reciprocity  treaties"  that  have  been 
talked  about  as  if  they  were  great  inventions,  are  sim- 
ply treaties  of  peace.  A  notable  instance  of  "tariff 
war"  arose  when,  some  years  ago,  the  Italians  levied 
a  very  high  duty  on  French  wines,  which  had  previously 
enjoyed  in  Italy  a  large  market,  that  of  course  now 
suffered  seriously.  In  the  hope  of  forcing  the  Italians 
to  open  the  market  again,  the  French  levied  a  corre- 
sponding duty  on  Italian  silk;  this  led  to  a  retaliation 
on  the  other  side,  until  it  all  resulted  in  great  suffering 
to  both  parties,  and  little  good,  if  any,  to  either.  A 
treaty  has  at  last  been  made  which  restores  industrial 
peace.  Altho  the  Italian  wine-maker  and  the  French 
silk-maker  each  could  get  prices  higher  by  just  so 
much  as  the  tariff  limited  foreign  competition,  each 
had  to  get  the  prices  out  of  his  own  people:  so  the 
country  could  not  be  benefited;  and  moreover,  the 
rise  in  prices  limited  the  dealer's  sales  and  the  con- 
sumer's enjoyments.  He  is  the  one  always  neglected 
in  artificial  finance,  either  in  taxation  or  scamping  or 
laV^or  restriction. 

France  seems  about  to  put  a  prohibitive  duty  on 
cottonseed-oil — an  American  industry  absorbing  more 


§  466  c]  Indirect  Taxes.  543 

than  $50,000,000  yearly.  Italy  is  considering  the  same 
step,  and  Austria  has  already  taken  it.  American  pro- 
tectionists are  threatening  a  retaliation  against  French 
red  wines.  Thus  there  seems  a  prospect  of  two  noses 
being  cut  off  to  spite  two  faces,  and  the  two  more  men- 
tioned (not  to  speak  of  others)  are  already  gone.  That 
our  commerce  would  breathe  more  freely  with  all  the 
noses  in  place,  is  counter  to  protectionist  doctrine. 

Because  Russia  exempts  from  excise,  such  of  her  beet- 
sugar  as  is  exported,  we,  under  the  Dingley  Act,  put 
an  equivalent  duty  on  it.  So  used  had  we  become  to 
performing  such  acts  of  aggression  ourselves  without 
eliciting  a  murmur  from  the  victims,  that  we  were 
quite  astounded  when  Russia  put  a  prohibitory  duty  on 
our  sugar.  She  was  our  best  customer  for  it,  taking 
$10,000,000  a  year  while  we  imported  less  than  $25,000 
worth  of  the  sugar  for  which  we  struck  her. 

Beginning  with  our  civil-war  tariffs,  our  hand  has 
been  against  every  man,  and  every  man  is  at  last  pre- 
paring for  defence.  So  far  have  our  aggressions  gone, 
that  at  last  there  is  talk  of  a  European  tariff  league 
against  us,  and,  league  or  no  league,  the  effects  of  one 
are  rapidly  being  wrought. 

France  has  already  put  a  protective  duty  on  our 
bacon.  Germany  has  been  on  the  point  of  making 
a  tariff  which  must  hurt  us  heavily,  and  at  this 
writing  commissioners  are  over  there  trying  to  find 
some  way  of  continuing  to  eat  our  cake  and  have  it. 
Other  countries  are  preparing  similar  defences  against 
us. 

The  advocates  of  high  tariffs  claim  that  the  foreigner 
pays  the  tax,  and  so  he  does,  so  far  as  he  can  afford  it — 
.._  ^^g  .  _  in  cases  where  (first)  adding  the  tax  to  the 
eigner  sometimes  pricc  would  drivc  the  imported  goods  from 
pays  e  ax.  ^^^^  market,  and  (second)  where  the  pro- 
ducer could  not  make  up  for  the  loss  by  gains  in  other 
markets;  then  he  might  bear  a  portion  of  the  tax  by 
reducing  prices.  But  that  the  foreigner  does  not 
generally  pay  it,  seems  proved  by  the  facts  under  every- 
body's eyes — that  the  prices  of  protected  goods  are 


544  Taxation.  [§  466  c 

high,  and  that  the  consumer  actually  does  pay  those 
prices.  And  it  is  plain  that  there  is  no  "protection", 
unless  it  makes  the  imported  goods  high,  and  enables 
the  domestic  manufacturer  to  sell  his  competing  goods 
high. 

The  contrary  statement  has  nevertheless  deceived  a 
good  many  people;  but  even  if,  after  all,  it  is  correct, 
how  does  it  help  France,  to  make  Italy  pay  a  lot  of 
her  taxes,  if  Italy  makes  France-pay  an  equal  lot  of  hers? 

But  suppose  one  country  can  get  ahead  of  the  other: 
so  it  could  if  it  went  in  with  an  army  and  took  the 
money.  Either  way  would  simply  be  a  case  of  might 
making  right.  There  is  no  more  justification  for  the 
thing  in  morals  than  there  is  in  common  sense. 

466  w.  Early  Yet    no    American    can    say  that    it    is 

American  •     i   ,  -i  i         r 

experience.  ncvcr   Tight   or   Sensible   for   a   nation   to 

take  a  step  which  may  lead  to  a  tariff  war.  When  we 
were  a  British  colony,  and  after,  the  efforts  of  British 
manufacturers  to  keep  their  monopolies  here  were 
merciless.  Nobody  here  could  begin  making  goods 
which  the  British  competitors  would  not  undersell  at 
any  loss.  When  the  Revolution  broke  out,  we  were  in 
the  pitiful  condition  of  being  dependent  on  the  enemy 
for  nearly  every  manufactured  article  that  we  could 
not  make  in  our  own  households — including,  of  course, 
the  articles  most' needed  to  carry  on  the  war.  The  war, 
of  course,  operated  as  a  barrier  to  English  competition, 
and  our  people  made  heroic  efforts  to  do  without  such 
manufactured  goods  as  they  could  not  make  themselves. 
The  makeshifts  of  that  time  must  have  had  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  the  development  of  Yankee  ingenuity. 
466 cej  From  the  After  the  war,  Hamilton,  the  first  Sec- 
Reuoiution  to  the  retary  of  the  Treasury,  realizing  that  the 
civil  war.  people  must  be  slowly  accustomed  to  tax- 

ation for  national  purposes,  concealed  his  in  a  moder- 
ate tariff  for  revenue  only.  The  English  manufacturers, 
of  course,  tried  to  recover  their  monopolies.  Our 
people  were  nearly  all  farmers,  and  naturally  wanted 
their  manufactured  goods  as  cheap  as  possible;    and 


§466/]  Indirect  Taxes.  545 

for  the  moment,  cheap  goods  of  course  meant  English 
goods.  But  distance  put  English  goods  at  some  dis- 
advantage, and  inevitably  some  manufactures  began 
to  develop  here;  it  was  not  until  181 6,  however,  that 
they  became  important  enough  to  secure  a  protective 
tariff.  Then  a  considerable  one  was  put  on,  which 
was  increased  in  1824.  But  by  1832  people  (espe- 
cially in  the  South,  where  there  were  no  manufac- 
turers) began  to  realize  that  our  manufacturers  had 
grown  strong  enough  to  take  care  of  themselves,  and 
were  making  undue  profits  at  the  expense  of  men 
who  were  not  manufacturers,  by  charging  for  domestic 
goods  as  high  prices  as  the  tariff  made  necessary  for 
imported  ones.  Consequently,  it  was  arranged  that 
duties  should  gradually  decrease  until  1842.  But  by 
that  time,  the  manufacturers  had  rallied  enough  sup- 
port to  the  doctrine  of  protection,  to  again  increase  the 
tariff,  and  it  was  kept  moving  up  and  down,  as  one 
party  or  the  other  got  control,  tho  it  never  got  very 
high  until  money  was  needed  to  carry  on  the  civil  war. 
466  (f).  Since  the  During  the  civil  war,  the  tariff  was  made 
civil  war.  vevy  high  solely  for  the  sake  of  revenue. 

But  after  the  war  was  over,  and  people  with  suffi- 
cient intelligence  began  to  think  that  they  would 
again  like  cheap  goods  and  more  goods  that  could 
not  well  be  produced  here,  they  found  that  during  the 
war,  powerful  manufacturing  interests  had  grown  up 
under  the  tariff,  and  now  were  ready  to  do  anything  to 
retain  their  profits.  All  idea  of  protecting  only  indus- 
tries that  needed  it  and  could  ultimately  justify  it, 
has  been  abandoned.  There  are  fifteen  hundred 
articles  in  the  tariff,  of  which  fourteen  hundred  yield 
no  revenue  at  all,  but  only  enable  American  manu- 
facturers to  keep  their  prices  at  the  tariff  rate.  Of  the 
remaining  hundred  articles,  only  about  twenty-five 
yield  revenue  enough  to  be  worth  keeping  on  the  list. 
The  most  frightful  corruption  ever  known  in  our  poli- 
tics has  been  the  result.  Congress  has  been  largely 
made  up  of  the  manufacturers  themselves  and  their 
agents,  and  it  is  generally  believed  that  the  Senate 


546  Taxation.  [§  466  / 

itself  was  bought  by  the  Sugar  Trust  in  '94.  Each  indus- 
try has  struggled  for  all  the  "protection"  it  could  get, 
and  has  agreed  to  vote  protection  to  other  industries 
on  condition  of  getting  their  votes  in  return.  The 
high  tariff  made  the  revenues  enormous,  and  then  the 
manufacturers'  party,  rather  than  reduce  the  tariff, 
recklessly  threw  the  revenues  away,  partly  in  waste- 
ful river  and  harbor  improvements  in  localities  where 
commerce  did  not  justify  them,  but  mainly  in  giving 
war-pensions  to  hosts  of  people  who  had  no  reasonable 
claim,  to  get  their  help  to  keep  the  dominant  party  in 
power. 

466  (g).  Indus-  The  war  had  kept  manufacturing  within 

trial  effects.  bounds,  despite  the  war  tariff;    but  when 

peace  and  prosperity  returned,  and  even  increase  of 
the  tariff  with  them,  there  was  a  wild  rush  into  the 
protected  industries.  The  country  became  glutted 
with  manufactured  goods  that  could  not  be  sold.  The 
great  panic  of  '73  was  attributed  to  this  over-produc- 
tion. Meanwhile,  although  some  manufactured  goods 
necessarily  fell  in  price,  many  agricultural  products — 
notably  wheat,  remained  as  high  as  ever.  The  pro- 
tectionists, suffering  from  overdoses  of  their  stimulant, 
cried,  like  the  victim  of  alcohol,  for  more  of  it.  The 
orgy  reached  its  height  in  1890,  when  the  McKinley 
bill  made  an  increase  in  the  tariff  so  far  beyond  any 
rhyme  or  reason,  that  the  people  at  last  got  tlieir  eyes 
open,  and,  in  the  election  of  '92,  swept  the  tariff  party 
from  power. 

466  r/i;.  Both  But  that  by  no  means  disposed  of  the 

parties  corrupted,  niattcr.  The  Corruption  then  began  to  at- 
tack the  Democratic  party,  which  had  not  even  the 
excuse  of  professed  principle,  for  continuing  the  enor- 
mities. That  party,  as  soon  as  in  power,  prepared, 
in  the  Wilson  bill,  a  new  tariff  bringing  the  duties 
somewhere  nearer  reason;  but,  as  already  intimated, 
three  of  the  party's  senators  refused  to  vote  for  it  unless 
it  gave  protection  to  the  Sugar  Trust;  other  interests 
refused  that  protection  unless  they  themselves  were 
granted  protection;    and  so  the  new  party  in  power, 


§466^]  Indirect  Taxes.  547 

although  it  lowered  some  of  the  duties,  failed  to  give 
the  reform  which  it  was  elected  to  give. 

The  Republicans,  since  their  restoration  by  the 
election  of  '96,  have  not  entirely  restored  the  duties 
lowered  by  the  Wilson  bill.  Their  experience  with  the 
McKinley  bill  has  kept  them  cautious. 

But  as  already  said,  a  protective  tariff  is  an  act  of 
aggression  against  the  trade  of  other  countries.  It  is 
wonderful  how  long  and  patiently  our  aggression  of  this 
kind  against  other  manufacturing  nations,  has  been 
borne.  But  they  are  at  last  turning  against  us,  and 
the  merited  destruction  of  the  system  by  reciprocity 
treaties  or  dual  tariffs,  is  only  a  question  of  time,  and 
probably  not  much  time. 

Raw  materials,  as  a  rule,  have  advanced  materially 
in  price  since  about  1890,  but  manufactured  goods,  in 
which  American  ingenuity  is  a  large  factor,'  have  shared 
little  in  the  advance,  and  have  in  many  cases  declined. 
A  notable  instance  is  that  hides  are  nearly  fifty  per  cent, 
higher,  while  boots  and  shoes  are  a  little  lower.  The 
conclusion  is  that  with  the  tariff  taken  off  to  cheapen 
raw  material  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  to  lead 
foreign  markets  to  seek  our  manufactured  goods  in 
exchange  for  their  own,  our  prosperity  would  be  greatly 
promoted.  And  even  now  many  manufacturers  are 
selling  in  foreign  markets  at  prices  less  than  the  tariff 
enables  them  to  charge  at  home.  In  1905,  the  congres- 
sional elections  showed  a  large  increase  in  the  demand 
for  free  raw  materials  from  manufacturers. 

^5G(i).  Tariffs  In    the    foregoing    account,    the    term 

tend  to  expand,  "manufacturers"  has  been  generally  used 
to  indicate  the  supporters  of  the  tariff,  because  they 
were  the  principal  actors.  But  the  fact  is  that  when 
there  is  a  tariff  on  manufactures,  those  not  manu- 
facturers rush  in  for  "protection"  too.  No  matter  how 
wise  such  a  tariff  at  its  inception,  it  not  only  stays 
after  it  becomes  harmful,  but  always  spreads  till  it 
does  become  harrnful.  Not  only  must  the  farmer's 
crops,  and  even  his  eggs,  be  "protected",  but  the  pure 


548  Taxation.  [§  4^6  * 

bounty  of  Nature  in  forests  and  mines,  must  be,  tintil, 
as  already  stated,  artificial  prices,  which  everybody 
using  wood  must  pay,  sweep  off  the  forests,  and  bring 
down  the  floods,  while  right  across  the  Canadian  border 
are  endless  forests  that  now  answer  no  human  need. 

466  (j).  Protection  A  protective  tariff  is  alleged  to  raise  the 
cind  wages.  wages  of  the  laborer.     It  does  so  about 

as  much  as  it  does  those  of  the  hen  when  eggs  are 
"protected".  The  laborer's  employer,  like  the  hen's 
owner,  alone  gets  the  benefit.  This  is  proved  by  specfic 
facts  abundantly  cited  already  (95  a);  and  by  the 
general  fact  that  in  the  long  run  wages  depend  on  ability, 
not  on  juggling  statutes.  And  it  is  because  of  his  ability, 
not  because  of  the  tariff,  that  the  American  mechanic's 
wages  are  the  highest  in  the  world.  Moreover,  a  pro- 
tective tariff  brings  little  new  capital  into  the  country 
(only  in  cases  where  it  makes  foreigners  establish 
plants  here)  and  the  wages  of  labor  of  any  given  degree 
of  ability  are  determined  mainly  by  the  amount  of 
capital  that  enterprisers  can  use  for  wages,  and  the  num- 
ber of  men  among  whom  the  wages  are  divided.  Note 
the  expression :  ' '  laborers  of  any  given  degree  of  ability  ". 
The  higher  the  ability,  the  larger  the  share  of  capital 
ready  to  pay  them,  and  the  fewer  the  men  to  share  it. 

Even  if  protection  did  increase  wages,  there  is  no 
question  that  it  increases  the  prices  of  what  the  wages 
buy.  But  we  always  have  with  us  that  old  folly  of 
the  wage-earner  thinking  only  of  what  he  gets,  not  of 
what  he  spends. 

Protection  brings  capital  out  of  other  pursuits  into 
the  protected  manufactures;  but  it  must  also  bring 
more  laborers  to  divide  it  among,  as  the  capital  could 
not  be  used  without  labor.  The  tariff  simply  diverts 
money  and  labor  from  one  pursuit  to  another.  That 
indeed  is  one  of  the  professed  objects.  The  protec- 
tionist claims  to  improve  on  the  distribution  of  labor 
indicated  by  blind  and  unaided  Nature. 

It  is  claimed  that  the  protected  manufactures  attract 
foreign   labor.     But  it  is   hard  to   see   how  that  can 


§  466  k]  Indirect  Taxes.  549 

increase  American  wages.  Attracting  foreign  labor  is 
just  what  protectionists  claim  that  they  do  not  want 
to  do,  and  of  course  insist  that  they  do  not  do.  They 
have  even  put  on  such  prohibitions  to  keep  it  out,  that 
the  law  has  had  to  settle  whether  a  foreign  musician  or 
even  a  foreign  clergyman  could  land  on  our  hospitable 
shores,  and  while  we  complain  of  the  inhospitable  recep- 
tion of  travelers  by  some  savages,  we  put  Chinamen  in 
jail  for  no  crime  but  being  among  us. 

When  countries  have  raised  their  tariffs,  there  has 
been  no  lasting  advance  of  wages  not  reasonably  attribu- 
table to  other  causes,  and  when  countries  have  lowered 
their  tariffs,  there  has  been  no  lasting  decline  of  wages 
not  attributable  to  other  causes.  The  recent  spurt  of 
protectionism  in  France,  Germany  and  Italy  has  made 
no  sudden  rise  in  the  wages  of  mechanics ;  and  under 
virtual  free  trade,  English  mechanics  have  had  their 
proportion,  and  probably  more,  of  the  advance  in  wages 
general  during  the  last  half-century. 
466  W.  Numbers  But  assuming  for  a  moment  that  pro- 
conoerned.  tcction  does  benefit  all  engaged  in  the  pro- 

tected industries,  and  that  it  does  not  do  so  at  the  expense 
of  the  community ;  it  is  still  worth  while  to  consider  what 
portion  of  the  population  of  the  United  States  is  bene- 
fited by  protected  industry.  Under  the  census  of  1900, 
there  were  bufa  little  over  six  per  cent.*  of  the  people 

*  There  were  about  29,000,000  engaged  in  gainful  occupations. 
Of  these  about  22,000,000  were  included  in  agriculture,  fisheries, 
mining,  professional  and  personal  service,  trade  and  transpor- 
tation. Of  the  remaining  7,000,000,  about  i, 800,000  were 
blacksmiths,  butchers,  builders  and  heavy  lumber  workers,  with 
whom  of  coiu"se  there  can  be  no  foreign  competition,  and  of  the 
remaining  5,200,000,  less  than  one  third  were  in  pursuits  really 
open  to  foreign  competition.  But  as  there  was  only  about  a 
third  of  the  population  at  work,  it  is  fair  to  presume  that  tho  but 
about  one  third  of  the  5,200,000  workers,  as  above,  were  affected 
by  the  tariff,  each  of  them  had  two  others — women  or  children 
or  old  people,  dependent  upon  him:  so  industries  supporting 
about  5,200,000  wei'e  affected  by  the  tariff,  or  a  little  over  six  per 
cent,  of  the  whole  population.  In  preceding  editions  of  this 
book,  the  non-working  dependents  were  not  taken  into  the 
calculation,  and  it  was  based  on  the  census  of  1S90.     The  two 


550  Taxation.  [§466^ 

at  work  in  the  United  States,  who  were  directly  affected 
by  the  tariff,  while  the  remaining  ninety-four  per  cent, 
of  the  people  were  paying  prices  enhanced  by  the  tariff ' 
on  the  immense  product  turned  out  through  machinery 
by  the  six  per  cent. 

Mr.  Atkinson  says' that  of  29,000,000  at  work,  only 
1,000,000  are  directly  affected  by  the  tariff. 

I  have  said  "the  remaining  ninety -four  per  cent", 
but  that  does  not  tell  the  whole  story:  the  six  per 
cent,  themselves  have  to  pay  enhanced  prices  for  all 
the  protected  goods,  even  each  mechanic  for  those  he 
works  on  himself. 

The  wages  of  the  six  per  cent,  are  not  any  higher, 
other  things  even,  than  the  wages  of  the  ninety -four 
per  cent. :  so  the  profits  resulting  from  the  manufac- 
turer being  able  to  get  tariff  prices,  must  partly  go 
into  the  pockets  of  the  enterprisers,  and  are  partly 
wasted  in  the  depreciated  prices  of  manufactured  goods 
that  come  with  the  occasional  gluts  which  high  tariffs 
always  cause.  Outside  of  monopolies,  however,  they 
are  probably  not  as  great  as  the  advocates  of  the  sys- 
tem claim. 

A  glut  is  an  excess  of  production  bevond 

466  r/;.  Gluts.  ,     ^  .  ^  ,  1  '   1     4. 

what  people  can  consume,  or  beyond  what 

they  have  other  productions  to  exchange  for  (466  g). 
Nothing  gluts  an  industry  oftener  than  duties  so  high 
as  to  shut  out  foreign  competition,  and  so  not  only  to 
tempt  too  many  people  into  producing  a  certain  thing, 
but  to  draw  people  away  from  making  the  things  that 
would  exchange  for  it.  As  people  sell  and  buy  for 
money,  they  do  not,  at  first  sight,  appear  to  exchange 
things  with  each  other.  But  as  we  saw  when  we  dis- 
cussed money,  money  is  but  a  means  of  making  the 

censuses  show  the  proportions  to  be  about  the  same.  True, 
there  are  tariff  rates  on  most  articles  produced  by  the  farmer, 
fisherman  and  miner,  but  as  those  articles  are  often  perishable, 
and  generally  cost  more  to  bring  from  elsewhere  than  to  produce 
here,  there  is  virtually  no  foreign  competition  to  "protect "  those 
producers  from. 


§466n]  Indirect  Taxes.  551 

exchanges  quicker  and  easier.  Nobody  sells  anything 
for  money  because  the  money  itself  is  of  any  use  to 
him:,  he  only  wants  it  to  pay  for  other  things.  It  is 
aptly  called  a  ''medium  of  exchange" — in  the  middle 
between  the  thing  parted  with  and  the  thing  acquired. 
But  to  go  back,  people  get  glutted  goods  cheaper 
than  goods  of  which  there  are  not  too  many;  but 
they  get  them  cheaper  only  after  they  have  paid,  at 
times  when  there  were  no  gluts,  more  than  the  differ- 
ence, in  prices  enhanced  by  taxes — more  than  the  differ- 
ence, because  besides  what  they  get  back  in  low-priced 
goods,  they  have  to  pay  the  enterpriser's  profits  when 
he  makes  any  profit — and  he  makes  profits  large  and 
often,  or  he  would  not  be  standing  the  loss  from  occa- 
sional gluts,  or  making  his  enormous  payments  to 
the  campaign  funds  of  the  party  which  keeps  up  the 
protective  system.  The  consumers  have  to  pay  these 
campaign  expenses  in  the  long  run,  and  have  to  pay 
duties  on  such  foreign  goods  as  the  protective  system 
leaves  room  for  them  to  buy,  with  the  expenses  of  col- 
lecting those  duties,  and  probably  in  some  instances 
with  profits  .on  those  duties,  and  threefold  profits  at 
that — to  the  importer,  the  jobber  and  the  retailer.  We 
have  seen  how  these  attempts  to  make  money  by  jug- 
glery succeed,  in  scamped  work  (228  6)  and  poor  money 
(361)  and  idle  prisoners  (444^)  and  indirect  taxes  gen- 
erally (464). 

466  rm;.  Effect  On  trusts,  the  influence  of  a  protective 

on  trusts.  tariff  is  very  bad  for  the  public  interest. 

It  deprives  the  public  of  the  benefit  of  competition 
between  the  foreigner  and  the  trust.  So  if  the  trust 
covers  the  whole  home  production  of  a  "protected" 
article,  people's  only  control  over  its  prices  will  be  in 
doing  without  its  products.  Moreover,  the  labor  trusts 
are  just  as  eager  for  "protection"  as  the  other  trusts, 
and  have  obtained  laws  shutting  out  skilled  and  able 
iinmigrants  whom  the  country  as  a  whole  greatly  needs. 

466  r»7;.  Con-  The  conclusion,  then,  in  regard  to  raising 

elusions.  taxation  by  tariff  duties,  is  that  it  is  at 


552  Taxation.  [§  466  n 

best  a  weapon ;  that  in  young  countries  it  may  be  salu- 
tary as  a  weapon  of  self-defence ;  that  in  all  countries, 
as  a  weapon  of  self-defence  or  even  of  industrial  war,, 
it  may  at  times  appear  necessary,  just  as  any  other 
weapon  sometimes  may  be;  but  that  in  a  mature 
country  at  peace,  it  is  most  dangerous  and  pernicious. 

Our  national  government  adheres  to  so 
^A^r^ellcanTyTer^^  bad  a  method,  largely  as  a  matter  of 
course,  from  historic  habit,  as  already 
indicated  (466  e),  but  especially  for  two  reasons:  (I) 
because,  as  the  national  government  has  charge  of  all 
our  relations  with  other  nations,  and  as,  consistently 
with  that,  the  Constitution  prohibits  the  separate  states 
from  levying  duties  on  imports  or  exports,  that  field 
of  taxation  is  left  specially  open  to  the  national  gov- 
ernment. And  (II)  the  Constitution  (Art.  I,  Sec.  II) 
provides  that  "all  direct  taxes  shall  be  apportioned 
among  the  several  states  according  to  their  respective 
numbers".  Now  the  value  of  property  is  not  at  all 
"according  to  their  respective  -numbers":  there  are 
rich  states  and  poor  states  having  about  the  same 
population.  Suppose  two  states  equal  in  population, 
but  one  five  times  as  rich  as  the  other:  then  if  govern- 
ment wanted  to  collect  the  same  amount  of  direct  tax 
from  one  as  from  the  other,  each  man  in  the  poor  state 
would  have  to  pay  five  per  ceiit.  of  his  property  where 
each  man  in  the  rich  state  paid  one  per  cent,  of  his. 
This  makes  it  virtually  impossible  for  the  national 
government,  under  the  Constitution,  to  impose  some 
of  the  direct  taxes  so  that  people  will  submit  to  them, 
or  ought  to  submit  to  them;  and  tlicreforc  tlie  govern- 
:nent  is  driven  to  the  indirect  taxes.  But  these  are 
really  more  just  only  so  far,  of  course,  as  they  are  put 
on  things  that  a  man  can  comfortably  do  without  if 
he  pleases. 

466  r  ;  Expert  '^'^^  feeling  that  our  national  system  is 

opinion  on  wroug,  is  strong  among  substantially  the 

0  .    ^j-jQig    body    of    trained    students    of   the 

subject,  and   their  opinion  is  not   less   valuable  than 


§  467]  Indirect  Taxation.  253 

if  they  paid  a  heavier  share  of  taxes :  for  taxes,  especially- 
indirect  taxes,  come  proportionally  hardest  on  people 
of  moderate  fortune,  as  we  shall  see  more  fully  later, 
and  they  are  quite  apt  to  know  best  where  the  shoe 
pinches. 

The  government  has  already  imposed  some  direct 
taxes — such  of  the  stamp-taxes  as  are  direct,  and  the 
income-tax  during  the  civil  war,  when  people  were 
ready  to  submit  to  almost  anything  to  save  the  Union. 
But  when  the  same  thing  was  tried  in  1894,  the  vSupreme 
Court  decided  that  it  was  a  direct  tax,  not  "apportioned 
among  the  several  states  according  to  their  respective 
numbers". 

..,  p^      ^  It  has  been  found   desirable  to   insure 

467,  Stamp-taxes,    , ,  ^        r      1    .  •  1  •  1 

the    payment    of    duties    and    excises    by 

something  farther  than  the  usual  precautions  in  collect- 
ing the  taxes.  To  many  things — especially  packages 
of  tobacco  and  cigars,  kegs  of  beer,  bottles  of  wine  and 
spirits,  and  packages  of  patent  medicines,  all  of  which 
are  favorite  subjects  of  duty  and  excise,  it  has  been 
found  well  to  affix  stamps  showing  that  the  tax  has 
been  paid.  Unstamped  goods  offered  for  sale  can  then 
be  seized. 

Some  things  pay  both  tariff  and  excise :  each  box  of 
imported  cigars  now  bears  a  duty  stamp  and  an  excise 
stamp;  and  for  some  time  after  the  Spanish  war,  each 
bottle  of  imported  wine  or  spirits,  after  paying  duty, 
bore  an  excise  stamp  also. 

As  already  said,  some  of  the  stamp -taxes  are  direct, 
and  we  are  now  discussing  only  indirect  taxes,  but 
there  is  not  much  to  be  said  about  stamp-taxes  any- 
how, and  we  may  as  well  have  done  with  them  here. 
They  have  been  carried  farther  than  as  mere  vouch- 
ers for  indirect  taxes  on  merchandise,  where  the  buyer 
of  the  goods  often  pays  for  the  stamps.  Governments 
often  sell  stamps  which  have  to  be  put  on  legal  instru- 
ments and  commercial  papers,  such  as  deeds,  notes  of 
hand,  bank  checks,  telegrams,  passenger-tickets,  etc. 
This  was  done  in  America  for  the  civil-war  tax  and  the 


554  Taxation.  [§  467 

Spanish-war  tax ;  and  in  most  European  countries  is  a 
permanent  thing — mainly  for  armies  in  expectancy  of 
war. 

Whether  those  stamp -taxes  are  direct 
indMirect.''"^^''^  o^  indirect  depends  upon  where  the  stamps 
are  put.  On  checksand  documents,  usually 
they  are  direct,  tho  the  telegraph  and  express  com- 
panies have  sometimes  succeeded  in  shifting  them  to 
their  customers. 

Now  in  this  sense,  whether  a  stamp-tax  (outside  of 
being  a  voucher  for  excise)  is  a  good  one,  Americans 
think  depends  somewhat  on  who  imposes  it — as  do 
the  merits  of  all  taxes,  for  that  matter.  It  was  per- 
haps the  chief  cause  of  our  separating  from  Great 
Britain,  but  when  we  have  imposed  it  ourselves  during 
war,  we  have  paid  it  cheerfully. 

It  is  a  pretty  good  sort  of  tax  in  so  far  as  it  is  pretty 
sure  to  be  paid  by  most  of  those  fairly  subject  to  it, 
and  very  sure  not  to  be  paid  by  those  who  are  not; 
but  it  yields  comparatively  little,  is  a  daily  bother  to 
business  men,  and,  of  course,  is  somewhat  in  restraint 
of  trade,  and  for  that  reason  cannot  well  be  pushed  to 
A67(b).  Often  ^  ^^^J  }^^S^  amount.  So  (carefully  re- 
mereiy'a petty  mcmbering  that  we  are  not  now  consider- 
nuisance.  ^^^  stamps  On  peculiar  merchandise,  and 

on  stock  transactions,  both  of  which  directly  trouble 
but  comparatively  few  people,  and  the  latter  of  which 
contain  a  large  element  of  gambling)  a  stamp- tax  is 
generally  a  pestiferous  little  nuisance,*  which  those 
who  pay  enough  of  it  to  be  entitled  to  be  heard,  would 
rather  pay  double,  in  a  lump  sum,  for  the  sake  of  get- 
ting rid  of. 

It  is  then  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  taxes 
worth  serious  discussion,  only  as  petty  nuisances  are 
worth  serious  discussion.     It  is  not  to  be  compared  in 

*  Mr.  Dingley  expected  his  new  intern al-re venue  sj'stem, 
devised  for  the  Spanish  war,  to  yield  about  $210,000,000  an- 
nually. Of  this,  he  expected  only  $15,000,000  to  come  from 
stamps  on  checks,  telegrams  and  express  receipts,  which  are 
bothering  people  at  every  turn. 


§467^]  Indirect  Taxation.  555 

importance  with  the  other  taxes  we  have  considered, 
and  are  to  consider — especially  for  a  rich  and  peaceful 
nation  not  obliged  to  exploit  every  possible  source  of 
revenue. 

The  preceding  paragraph  was  written  in  1900.  A 
sufficient  comment  on  it  is  that  virtually  all  of  the 
stamp-taxes  have  since  been  repealed. 


CHAPTER   XXXVIII. 

INDIRECT    TAXES    (CONTINUED). 

General  Conclusions. 
.^„  ,  „    ,^  Indirect  taxes,  as  now  administered  in 

468.  Indirecttaxes      .      ,^    •■     j  oj.    x  n  i 

expensive  to  pay  the  United  btates,  are  generally  much  more 
and  to  collect.  expensive  to  collect  than  direct  ones. 
And  as  intermediate  profits  sometimes  follow  indirect 
taxes  (464,  466  I) ,  they  are  apt  to  be  more  expensive  to 
pay,  as  well  as  to  collect,  than  taxes  which  can  be  paid 
direct. 

As  the  United  States  taxes  have  been  laid  in  recent 
years,  collection  of  the  excises  costs  about  half  as 
large  a  percentage  of  them,  as  collection  of  the  duties. 

From  1870  to  1890  the  tariff  yielded  more  than  the 
excises — about  double.  A  few  years  later  the  results 
were  reversed. 

468  raj.  Hard  on  Indirect  taxes  are  not  gauged  in  pro- 
the poor.  portion    to    people's    ability   to    pay:     as 

generally  administered,  they  fall  unduly  upon  the 
poor,  and  do  vastly  more  than  all  the  injustices  in 
distributing  the  product  of  labor,  toward  making  "the 
rich  richer  and  the  poor  poorer",  tho  even  they  with 
all  the  other  agencies,  are  not  able  to  accomplish  the 
result.  To  get  enough  out  of  such  taxes  to  make  them 
worth  while,  a  large  portion  of  them  must  be  placed  on 
the  necessities  in  universal  use.  These  absorb  all  a 
poor  man's  income,  while  most  of  a  rich  man's  income 
goes  in  luxuries,  and  it  is  no  privation  for  him  to  pay 
taxes  on  them;    and  moreover,  the  portion  of  his  in- 

556 


§4686]  Indirect  Taxes.  557 

come  which  he  does  not  spend,  indirect  taxes  cannot 
touch  at  all  This  is  an  argument,  as  we  shall  see  more 
clearly  later  (470  ■t),  for  taxing  such  portion  of  incomes 
as  is  not  spent  in  necessities. 

Taxes  are  generally  made  very  heavy  on  the  rich 
man's  luxuries  (as,  if  there  are  indirect  taxes  at  all, 
they  ought  to  be),  yet  he  has  his  choice  whether  to  in- 
dulge in  those  luxuries  or  not,  while  the  poor  man  has 
no  choice  whether  he  will  use  taxed  necessities  or  not. 
True,  there  is  no  excise  on  most  things  produced  at 
home,  but  he  cannot  get  along  with  those  alone,  and  if 
he  could,  there  is  a  tariflE  on  nearly  all  the  correspond- 
ing foreign  productions — on  drugs  and  sugar  and 
woolens,  for  instance — for  the  avowed  purpose  of  en- 
abling the  American  producer  to  charge  that  much 
more :  so  the  poor  man  has  to  pay  higher  prices  to  the 
American  manufacturer,  in  many  cases  where  he  does 
not  pay  the  American  government. 

468 rfe;.  stimulate  Indirect  taxes,  then,  are  hard  on  the 
corrupt  legislation,  poor  Compared  with  the  rich.  And  there 
is  another  social  division  apt  to  result  from  the  mdirect 
system:  Indirect  taxes  set  off  a  portion  of  the  com- 
munity with  interests  against  the  community  as  a 
whole:  for  they  give  manufacturers  powerful  induce- 
ments to  influence  legislation  for  their  ow^n  benefit,  at  the 
expense  of  the  rest  of  the  community. 

As  a  peculiar  advantage  in  resisting  reform,  such 
•interested  parties  have  the  cry  of  "vested  interests". 
When  factories  have  grown  up  under  a  system  of  tariff 
and  excise,  even  when  changed  circumstances  make 
the  system  bad,  the  attempt  to  change  it  is  naturally 
met  by  the  cry  that  legislation  ought  to  respect  "vested 
interests  ".  So  it  ought,  to  a  reasonable  degree,  especially 
in  taxation.  '  Some  writers  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  a 
bad  system  is  apt  to  be  better  than  a  good  change. 
But  the  moral  is  that,  as  changes  so  upset  industry,  it 
is  doubly  important  to  make  taxes  so  wisely  that  they 
will  stand. 

Yet  those  directly  interested  in  the  tariff,  do  not 
always  go  on  this  principle.     On  the  contrary,  they  are 


55S  Taxation.         ••  [§4686 

constantly  changing  it  on  speculation.  Since  1862,  the 
tariff  has  been  changed  some  twenty-five  times,  all 
but  once  at  the  instance  of  some  of  the  protectionists  who 
had  "  little  games  "  of  their  awn  to  play. 

Fail  to  Indirect   taxation    lessens    the    citizen's 

stimulate  interest  interest  in  good  government.  Under  it, 
in  government.  ^j^^  citizen  canuot  kuow  what  he  is  pay- 
ing to  the  government,  or  whether  it  is  more  or  less  this 
year  than  last.  He  has  no  plain  direct  experience,  in  his 
own  person,  of  economy  or  extravagance  in  government, 
and  therefore  has  only  a  hearsay  interest  in  working 
for  honest  and  competent  government. 

The  government  of  the  United  States  has  increased  in 
cost  to  each  citizen  from  $4.44  for  the  year  1884  to 
$7.14  for  the  year  1904.  During  both  of  Cleveland's 
terms,  the  cost  was  less  than  in  the  terms  preceding 
and  following  his.  If  the  taxes  had  been  direct,  is  it 
likely  that  the  people  would  have  permitted  such  an 
increase?  When,  as  in  New  York  City,  only  one  man 
in  twenty-five  pays  any  direct  taxes,  it  is  no  wonder 
that  the  government  is  extravagant.* 


*  Speaking  on  this  subject  in  the  House  of  Lords  in  i860,  the 
Earl  of  Derby  said  that  "by  making  the  whole  revenue  of  the 
United  Kingdoin  depend  upon  direct  taxation  the  pressure 
would  be  so  odious  that  wars  would  be  avoided,  because  no 
party  would  incur  the  odium  of  carrying  them  on".      (Wells.) 

In  England,  the  treasury  gets  but  five  sevenths  of  what 
consumers  pay.  Some  good  authorities  put  it  as  low  as  three 
fifths.  In  Prussia  it  costs  four  per  cent,  to  collect  direct  taxes, 
and  twelve  per  cent,  for  indirect.  The  Frenchman  pays  not 
only  the  tax,  but  one  fifth  of  the  cost  of  his  goods  is  wasted 
on  collection  expenses  and  intermediate  profits.  But  to  find 
the  extreme  of  this  waste,  we  inust  come  to  the  United  States. 
In  1846  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  estimated  that  the 
government  got  $27,000,000  from  duties,  while  the  people 
paid  $44,000,000  in  increased  prices  of  the  articles  taxed.  In 
'67-8,  a  leading  authority  in  the  New  York  Constitutional  Con- 
vention, expressed  the  opinion  that  the  consumers  paid  the 
dealers  and  manufacturers  at  least  half  as  much  again  as  the 
amount  of  the  tax.  About  18S3,  Mr.  Springer  stated  in  Con- 
gress, as  the  result  of  a  careful  examination,  that  during  the 


§468(i]  Indirect  Taxes.  559 

One  feature  of  this  consideration  has  been  pointed 
out  to  me  by  Professor  Trent.  The  novelty  and  pro- 
priety of  the  suggestion  tend,  did  not  his  work  in  his 
later  field  prevent,  to  make  one  regret  his  abandonrnent 
of  Economics.  He  points  out  that  the  indirect  tax- 
payer has  no  such  evidence  to  give  him  the  standing 
in  court  that  the  direct  taxpayer  has,  if  he  wishes  to 
exercise  his  right  to  sue  a  public  officer  for  misappro- 
priation of  taxes. 

468  w.  whytiwy  Yet  in  spite  of  all  these  objections  to 
are  popular.  indirect  taxcs,  they  are  popular  with  many 

people,  and  for  the  reason  that  we  have  many  other 
governmental  institutions — the  weaknesses  of  human 
nature.  Most  men  do  not  know  anything  about  indirect 
taxes,  but  pay  them  without  even  knowing  that  they 
are  paying  taxes.  Men  do  not  pay  most  of  their  taxes 
at  the  government  offices:  they  pay  the  indirect  ones 
at  places  which  they  object  less  to  going  to — ^the  gro- 
cer's and,  too  often,  the  bar-room.  That  is  the  main 
reason  why  they  prefer  indirect  ones.  Yet  if  wise 
statesmen  were  to  take  pity  on  them  and  give  them 
the  cheaper  direct  taxes,  they  would  reciprocate  by 
turning  the  wise  statesmen  out  of  office.  There  is  not 
a  community  in  the  world  with  sense  enough  to  pay  all 
of  its  taxes  directly.  Colbert  (462)  realized  that  where 
taxation  is  concerned,  men  are  generally  geese,  and  wise 
statesmen  treat  them  as  such. 

All  this  indicates  that  the  ways  of  collecting  taxes, 
utterly  irrespective  of  their  amount,  might  make  a 
great  difference  in  the  contentment  and  happiness  of 
the  people.     Yet  it  is  difficult  to  collect  them  In  the 

twenty  years  preceding,  the  people  of  the  United  States  had 
paid  in  consequence  of  indirect  taxes,  but  over  and  above  the 
taxes  themselves,  more  than  eleven  billions  of  dollars,  of  which 
the  government  had  not  received  a  dollar. 

As  one  instance  showing  how  much  manufacturers  have 
profited  by  systems  of  indirect  taxation,  in  1883  the  match- 
fnanufacttirers  objected  to  the  removal  of  a  tax  of  one  cent 
per  package,  and  when  the  tax  was  removed  in  spite  of  them, 
the  price  fell  a  cent  and  a  half  a  package.  (Condensed  frcrni 
Wells.) 


^60  Taxation.  "  [§  46S  (i 

ways  that  v/ill  really  hurt  least  in  the  long  run.  Taxing 
is  a  sort  of  surgical  operation  anyhow,  and  the  way 
that  really  costs  the  patient  least,  may  be  the  most 
painful  for  the  moment. 

Taxes  can  be  made  easier  if  paid  in  instalments,  rather 
than  in  lump  sums,  and  the  indirect  tax  is  of  that  kind, 
but,  as  already  said,  it  is  the  most  expensive,  tho  the 
one  the  vast  majority  ot  people  most  willingly  pay.  A 
few  cents  a  pound  when  one  buys  tea  and  coffee,  or  a 
little  increase  in  the  cost  of  something  that  many  men 
are  ready  to  pay  as  high  for  as  beer  and  whiskey,  seems 
a  small  matter  (especially  as  men  generally  do  not  stop 
to  think  about  it  at  all)  compared  with  what  the  same 
amount  of  taxes  would  seem  if  they  and  other  indirect 
taxes  were  all  presented  in  a  lump  sum,  once  a  year, 
in,  for  instance,  the  shape  of  a  government  claim  against 
a  man's  house. 

But  as  it  is,  there  is  a  tax-claim  against  every  man's 
house,  if  he  has  one,  or  against  his  landlord's  if  he 
has  not.  But  that  is  just  so  much  the  more  reason 
why,  if  that  claim  were  increased  by  diminishing  his 
indirect  taxes,  he  would  want  to  turn  out  the  govern- 
ment increasing  it,  and  bring  in  one  that  would  appear 
to  tax  him  less.  And  there  is  something  more  substan- 
tial than  mere  appearance  in  favor  of  the  indirect  sys- 
tem, or  a  combination  of  the  two :  men  with  little  fore- 
thought or  little  property  (and  the  two  are  apt  to  mean 
nearly  the  same  thing,  and  moreover,  the  vast  majority 
of  men  are  of  that  kind)  would  be  sure  to  be  found 
lacking  the  means  to  pay  their  taxes  if  all  were  pre- 
sented in  one  big  bill,  while  they  manage  to  pay  them 
a  trifle  at  a  time,  in  increased  prices  of  their  purchases. 

Some  claim  that  so  far  as  people  realize  them,  in- 
direct taxes  do  encourage  saving,  but  that  seems  rather 
fine-spun.  A  considerable  lump  sum  is  a  more  effective 
argument  than  a  charge  of  small-shot  petty  sums.  Prob- 
ably nobody  ever  yet  lessened  liis  total  expenditure  on 
account  of  taxation — refused  the  thing  he  had  the 
money  to  pay  for,  because  part  of  its  price  represented 


§468^  Indirect  Taxation.  561 

a  tax.  If  he  could,  not  afford  it,  the  tax  did  not  make 
him  less  apt  to  spend  his  money  in  something  else,  or 
more  apt  to  put  it  in  the  bank. 

468  (e).  Summary  To  sum  Up  the  case  for  and  against  in- 
for  and  against.  .  direct  taxcs  \  they  are  apparently  so  easy  to 
pay  that  it  is  quite  probable  that  no  country  is  yet 
civilized  enough  to  get  along  without  them.  But  prob- 
ably, as  people  grow  wiser,  such  taxes  will  ultimately 
disappear,*  because  they  keep  the  payers  blind  to  the 
extravagances  in  government,  are  corrupting  to  people 
and  rulers,  and  tho  the  paying  is  comparatively  easily 
done,  they  are  really  the  most  expensive  of  all  taxes 
to  collect,  and  the  hardest  of  all  taxes  on  the  poor. 

*  From  1841  to  1896,  the  proportion  of  the  Imperial  Revenue 
of  Great  Britain  coming  from  indirect  taxes,  fell  from  73  to  52 
per  cent.  This  was  accompanied  by  a  great  increase  in  the 
consumption  of  things  used  by  the  laboring  classes.      (Wells.) 


CHAPTER   XXXIX. 

INQUISITORIAL    DIRECT    TAXES. 

Income  and  Inheritance  Taxes. 

469,  Direct  taxes  ^^  ^°"^^  ^°^  ^°  *^^®  ^^^^^  generally 
divided  into  Inquisi- called  direct.  There  is  one  broad  line  of 
torial  and  Obvious,  distinction  that  we  may  as  well  follow  in 
treating  them:  some  of  the  objects  are  seen  of  all  men, 
while  others  cannot  be  got  at  without  prying  into  pri- 
vate affairs. 

If  you  have  ever  waited  on  an  American  dock  (Euro- 
pean custom-houses  are  not  half  so  bad)  to  have  your 
baggage  examined,  you  probably  think  that  we  have 
considered  some  of  the  prying  taxes  already. 

But,  as  remarked  more  than  once,  the  human  mind 
cannot  often  make  any  classification  that  does  not 
overlap — probably  because  there  are  no  hard-and-fast 
divisions  in  Nature.  Probably  we  cannot  do  better  than 
group  the  direct  taxes  into  Inquisitorial  and   Obvious. 

Now  to  begin  on  the  first  group,  and  from  a  point  we 
are  already  a  little  acquainted  with:  the  promotion  of 
saving  is  not  the  only  good  reason  for  taxing  the 
things  that  enter  into  a  man's  consumption.  There 
are  a  good  many  reasons  why  the  rate  at  which  a  man 
is  willing  to  spend  on  himself  and  his  family,  should  be 
the  rate  at  which  he  should  spend  for  the  general  good. 
But  the  more  a  man  must  spend  on  his  family,  the  less 
he  can  afford  to  pay  in  taxes.  A  way  around  has  been 
found  in  the  direct  tax  on  luxuries  that  a  man  can 
do   without — horses,   carriages,   billiard-tables,   pianos, 

562 


§  47°  b]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  563 

watches,  jewelry,  etc.,  etc.  But  on  the  other  hand, 
wa,tches,  jewelry  and  many  such  things  are  easily 
concealed,  the  taxes  are  not  only  inquisitorial,  easily 
lied  about  and  expensive  to  collect,  but  they  yield  too 
little  to  justify  a  capable  people  in  fooling  with 
them. 

As  we  cannot,  then,  approve  of  many 
of  the  taxes  on  a  man's  outgo  that  we 
have  so  far  considered,  can  we  say  anything  better  for 
a  tax  on  his  income  ?  It  would  be  at  least  direct  enough, 
and  as  it  could  not  very  readily  distribute  itself,  we 
would  at  least  know  whom  we  were  taxing.  Moreover, 
the  income-tax  would  avoid  some  injustices  inherent 
in  other  taxes:  a  man  would  have  to  pay  only  on 
470  ra;  Falls  only  ^^^^  succcssful  Operations,  where  he  could 
on  successes  and     afford  to,  and  not  on  his  failures.     On  the 

actice  property,        ^^j^^^    ^^^^^^    ^    ^^^^^^    ^^^    ^^    ^^^    ^^^.^^ 

and  excises  whether  he  makes  a  profit  on  the  goods 
or  not. 

Moreover,  a  man  would  have  to  pay  only  on  property 
returning  income— not  on  idle  property.  But  not  all 
people  consider  that  a  merit:  the  Henry  George  school 
thinks  idle  real  estate  the  best  possible  object  of  taxa- 
tion, as  tending  to  force  the  landlord  to  improve.  That, 
however,  is  a  frightfully  stupid  scheme,  at  least  when 
put  in  so  extreme  a  way:  for  the  money  to  improve 
the  real  estate  would  have  to  come  out  of  some  other 
mode  of  production  where  it  is  probably  more  needed, 
as  proved  from  the  fact  of  its  already  being  there. 
The  scheme  is  simply  one  to  rob  Peter  to  pay  Paul,  like 
nearly  every  other  scheme  to  affect  industries  by  taxa- 
tion. We  will  consider  this  subject  farther  when  we 
come  to  the  taxation  of  real  estate. 

Now  it  seems  very  desirable  that  each  man  should 
pay  according  to  his  ability  to  pay.  All  the  authorities 
Aiarb)  and  is  ^^gf^e  ou  that;  and  a  man's  actual  income 
proportioned  to  each  year,  if  he  earns  it  himself,  is  probably 
"'"''^y-  the  best  test  of  his  ability  to  pay ;  and  if  he 

does  not  earn  it  himself,  taxing  it  is  probably  the  best 


564  Taxation  [§470^ 

way  to  secure  his  contribution  to  the  common  good, 
as  he  makes  none  by  producing. 

We  seem,  then,  to  have  at  last  reached  the  ideal  tax. 
But  it  is  too  ideal  for  this  imperfect  world.  The  assessors 
470  (c).  Lihe  all  have  to  depend  on  the  .taxpayer's  statement 
a^prem^umm^"^^'  of  the  amount  of  liis  income :  they  can  never 
lying.  know  the  facts  for  themselves.     So,  as  long 

as  human  nature  remains  as  it  is,  there  will  never  be  an 
income-tax,  any  more  than  there  will  be  a  tariff-  or  excise- 
tax,  which  will  not  be  a  swindle  of  the  taxpa^^er  scrupulous 
enough  to  tell  the  whole  truth,  for  the  benefit  of  the 
taxpayer  unscrupulous  enough  to  conceal  it.  All  these 
inquisitorial  taxes — direct  or  indirect,  that  would  pry 
into  people's  private  affairs,  put  a  premium  on  lying, 
and  make  the  truth-teller  pay  the  liar's  taxes  for  him. 

There  are  at  least  two  taxes  that  people  cannot  evade, 
but  they  can  evade  some  easier  than  others — mcome- 
tax,  inheritance-tax  and  personal-property  tax  easiest  of 
all. 

Perhaps  if  dishonest  men  do  not  make  a  clean  breast 
to  the  assessor  regarding  such  matters,  that  should  not 
prevent  honest  men  from  doing  their  duty.  But  very 
conscientious  men  might  question,  and,  as  a  well-known 
fact,  do  seriously  question,  whether  it  is  their  duty 
to  pay  all  the  personal  and  income  and  inheritance 
taxes  of  the  community,  and  let  the  rascals  go  scot-free. 
The  result  in  practice  is  that,  despite  an  occasional 
exception,  men  who  scorn  to  evade  any  other  obliga- 
tion, unhesitatingly  evade  the  inquisitorial  taxes.  A 
striking  illustration  of  this  is  nothing  less  than  that, 
as  Mr.  Wells  says,  "a  high  court  .  .  .  has  recently 
decided  that  'perjury  in  connection  with  a  man's  tax- 
lists  does  not  affect  his  general  credibility  under  oath.' " 

The  premium  on  roguery  is  certainly  higher  in  an 
income-tax  than  in  duties  and  excises,  just  as  the 
income-tax  represents  the  profits  of  a  year,  while  a  duty 
or  an  excise  concerns  but  a  single  transaction,  and  lying 
is  unquestionably  easier  regarding  income.  Stamps  and 
customs  inspections  have  made  evasion  very  difficult 
regarding  tariffs  and  excises. 


§47°/]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  565 

The  public  has  no  right  to  know  a  man's 
flghis'o/pHulll.  income:  it  would  make  it  harder  for  the 
taxpayer  to  get  through  times  of  depres- 
sion, and  send  the  leeches  after  him  all  the  thicker  in 
times  of  prosperity.  People  dealing  with  a  man  are 
entitled  to  know  his  claim  to  credit,  in  a  general  way; 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  the  rest  of  the  world  is 
entitled  to  know:  tho  if  they  were  perfectly  wise  and 
good — would  not  strike  a  man  when  he  is  down,  and 
overcharge  him  when  he  is  prosperous,  there  might 
be  no  objection  to  their  knowing.  But  as  the  world  is 
far  from  perfectly  wise  and  good,  considerable  privacy 
is  necessary  to  safety  and  comfort. 

Yet  where  the  good  of  the  state  is  concerned,  the 
right  of  privacy  must  give  way.  Sometimes  even  the 
right  to  life  has  to.  But  opinions  differ  as  to  whether 
an  income-tax,  rather  than  some  other  taxes,  is  for  the 
good  of  the  state.  This  very  invasion  of  privacy  is 
one  of  the  reasons  why  it  is  not. 

470  re;.  Generally  Taxing  incomcs  tends  to  double  taxa- 
doubies  taxation,  ^^q^  q^^^^  doublc  taxation  is  even  pro- 
hibited in  some  constitutions.  If  a  man  pays  taxes  on 
real  estate,  stock  in  trade,  bonds,  stocks,  etc.,  and  then 
pays  again  on  the  income  they  bring  him,  he  certainly 
pays  twice. 

470  rf;  Asiiius-  ^^  ^^  ^  standard  question  whether,  if 
trail ng progressive  people  will  tax  incomcs,  they  should  bear 
axa  ion.  ^^  hcavily  on  a  little  one  as  on  a  big  one — 

tax  it  the  same  percentage.  The  arguments  both  ways 
are  very  strong.  The  strongest  perhaps  is  that  a  man 
with  ten  thousand  dollars  can  easier  spare  a  given  per- 
centage— say  five  per  cent.,  having  ninety-five  hundred 
dollars  left,  than  a  man  with  ten  hundred  dollars  can 
spare  five  per  cent.,  having  but  nine  hundred  and 
fifty  left. 

Yet  to  do  as  some  propose — tax  the  big  incomes  so 
heavily  as  to  leave  all  net  incomes  equal,  would  be 
neither  practical  nor  just. 

If  a  man  is  used  to  spending  ten  thousand  a  year, 
it  would  certainly  be  harder  on  him  to  cut    his  scale 


566  Taxation.  [§47°/ 

down  to  nine  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  than  it  would 
be  on  the  thousand-dol-lar  man  to  cut  his  scale  down 
to  nine  hundred  and  fifty.  But  then  arises  the  ques- 
tion whether  it  otight  to  be  harder,  and  that  is  too 
big  a  question  to  be  settled  here.. 

The  next  important  argument  in  favor  of  a  pro- 
gressive income-tax  is  that  it  tends  to  make  men  stop 
work  after  they  have  got  enough,  and  give  young  men 
a  better  chance.  The  whole  community  would  benefit 
by  that,  if  the  older  men  would  use  their  leisure  for 
the  benefit  of  the  community,  in  charity  and  politics; 
but  it  is  not  at  all  certain  that  they  would.  If  their 
tendency  to  do  so  is  increasing,  that  would  be  an  in- 
crease in  the  argument  for  a  progressive  income-tax. 
But  the  argument  fails  because  it  is  an  argument  for 
increasing  the  difficulty  of  men  reaching  a  competence 
to  retire  on  and  devote  themselves  to  the  public  good: 
if  the  progressive  tax  would  stimulate  men  to  retire, 
it  would  to  the  same  degree  make  it  hard  for  them 
to  get  enough  to  retire  on. 

470  cg;.  Discrim-  In  somc  countrics  they  do  not  levy  the 
ination  of  sources,  income-tax  on  wagcs  or  profits,  but  only 
on  interest  and  rents;  and  this  certainly  removes  the 
objections  a  stage  farther  oft:  the  tax  no  longer  ob- 
structs earning,  but  only  saving. 

It  would  not  be  well  to  tax  interest  the  same  as  rent 
(472/),  because,  as  population  grows,  and  people  crowd 
together,  rents  tend  to  increase;  while  as  capital  in- 
creases, the  rate  of  interest  tends  to  decrease. 

There  is  still  more  to  be  said  in  favor  of  exempting 
wages  and  profits,  and  taxing  rent  and  interest:  it 
would  tend  to  set  men  to  producing,  who  would  other- 
wise be  living  in  useless  indolence  upon  what  their  fathers 
^70(h).  As  equal-  h^d  made.  It  would  also  tend  to  equal- 
iziiy  fortunes.  {^.e  men's  fortunes.  But  that  is  attainable, 
and  probably  desirable,  only  as  you  can  equalize  men. 
Certainly  the  way  to  attain  it  is  not  to  clog  the  able 
man,  but  to  help  the  weaker  one.  It  might  help  him, 
to  largely  decrease  his  percentage  of  taxation  if  you 
could    do    so    by    slightly    increasing    the   percentage 


§47°/]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  567 

on  the  larger  income  of  able  men.  But  as  nearly  as 
we  can  get  at  the  figures,  there  are  so  many  more  people 
with  small  incomes  than  with  big  ones,  that  if  you 
wanted  to  halve  the  taxes  of  people  with  less  than  one 
thousand  dollars  a  year,  instead  of  increasing  richer 
people's  taxes  "a  slight  percentage",  you  would  have 
to  more  than  double  them — multiply  them  by  about 
two  and  a  half:  and  if  you  wanted  to  halve  the  taxes 
of  people  with  less  than  four  thousand  dollars  a  year 
(the  income  that  the  law  of  1894  tried  to, exempt), 
you  would  have  to  multiply  the  taxes  of  those  with 
more,  by  about  four.  Mr.  Godkin  figured  that  the 
result  of  dividing  all  English  incomes  of  over  $15,000 
among  the  community  at  large  would  be  that  each  person 
would  be  richer  by  about  four  cents  a  day. 
MdO).  As  offset-  ^  progressive  income-tax  could  be 
ting  injustice  in  made  to  offsct  the  injustice  in  some  other 
taxes — of  the  indirect  taxes  on  necessities, 
for  instance  (468  a),  but  only  very  roughly.  Yet,  if  we 
are  to  have  a  system  of  bad  taxes  to  balance  each 
other's  badnesses,  as  most  of  the  ordinary  taxes — - 
especially  the  duties  and  excises,  come  easier  on  large 
incomes  than  on  small  ones,  a  heavier  tax  on  large 
incomes  would  tend  to  make  things  even.  That  may 
be  the  best  we  can  do  at  this  stage  of  evolution:  and 
of  course  we  have  considered  the  progressive  feature 
only  on  the  assumption  that  we  are  to  have  an  income- 
tax,  bad  or  not. 

Now  if  we  have  it,  does  the  state  give  anything  in 
return  to  justify  making  it  progressive  ?  No :  as  a 
470  r;  Out  of  man's  income  increases,  the  state  does  no 
proportion  to  more  for  him,  in  proportion,  than  it  does 
states  seruwes.      ^j^-j^    j^-^    i^come    is    Small,    but    rather 

less  in  proportion.  The  protection  of  the  rich  man's 
life,  liberty  and  pursuit  of  happiness  really  calls  for  less 
from  the  state  than  does  the  protection  of  the  poor 
man's.  The  rich  man  lives  where  he  is  less  subject  to 
attack  from  violence  or  disease,  he  is  less  subject  to  per- 
secution, and  is  in  a  better  position  to  take  care  of 
himself  in  every  way,  than  is  the  poor  man:  so  the  state 


568  Taxation.  [§47°/ 

has  to  do  less  for  him  merely  as  a  man.  From  this 
point  of  view,  then,  there  is  no  justice  in  the  state 
taxing  a  man  more  in  proportion,  while  its  service  to 
him  grows  less  in  proportion.  As  already  stated,  the 
ideal  is  to  tax  in  proportion  to  his  .ability.  The  attempt 
to  tax  beyond  that  is  only  one  manifestation  of  the 
constant  effort  of  those  who  can  produce  little,  to  get 
along  at  the  expense  of  those  who  can  produce  much.* 

This  is  practicable  and  desirable  only  through  philan- 
thropy, not  through  spoliation.  We  already  have 
needed  to  touch  that  question,  and  will  need  to  consider 
it  farther,  later. 

Meanwhile,  in  spite  of  the  arguments  just  given, 
some  very  good  writers  say  that  the  notion  that  taxa- 
tion should  be  gauged  by  the  service  rendered,  is  rather 
out  of  date,  and  they  give  one  very  good  reason — that  it 
is  impossible  to  gauge  what  the  state  does  for  men: 
to  civilized  man,  the  state  is  simply  a  condition  of 
existence,  like  air  or  water — in  a  sense,  all  civilized 
men  owe  it  everything,  and  there  are  no  degrees  in 
everything.  "In  a  sense",  as  just  said,  the  argument 
is  good.  But  it  cannot  upset  the  other  side :  questions 
of  justice  come  in  regarding  even  the  distribution  of  air 
and  water.  Yet  undoubtedly,  a  man  with  more  money 
than  he  can  reasonably  use,  should  do  more  in  propor- 
tion for  the  community,  than  a  man  who  has  only  what 
he  can  reasonably  use,  or  less.  But  justice  is  one  thing 
MO(h).  Taxation  and  human  charity  another.  If  the  com- 
uersus  benevolence,  munity  tries  to  Tob  the  rich  for  the  benefit 
of  the  poor,  under  the  cover  of  taxation,  it  simply  at- 
tacks whatever  tendency  the  rich  may  have  to  give 
voluntarily.  When  one  thinks  of  the  increasing  mil- 
lions given  year  by  year  to  charity  and  education — 
more,  probably,  in  America  than  in  any  other  country, 
it  is  easier  to  see  how  such  taxation  might  close  pocket- 
books  more  than  it  would  open  them.  As  an  illustrative 
case:  when  the  income-tax  of  '94  was  enacted,  one  of 

*  ' '  The  theory  of  progressive  taxation  is  a  vestige  of  the  old 
prejudice  that  regarded  wealth  as  ...  a  sort  of  theft  from  the 
rest  of  the  country."     (Menier,  quoted  by  Wells.) 


§  47°  ^]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  569 

the  journals  gave  an  instance  of  a  benevolent  man 
who  said:  "Oh  well,  if  they  want  to  take  it  by  force 
I'll  simply  deduct  it  from  my  charities." 

But  if  all  taxes  are,  in  that  sense,  "taken  by  force": 
why  should  a  man  propose  to  deduct  that  one  from 
his  charities,  if  he  did  not  deduct  others?  Because 
that  one  was  not  levied  on  an  even  basis  to  all  men. 
No  one  with  an  income  of  less  than  $4,000  was  called 
upon  to  pay  it. 

Yet  looking  at  the  matter  solely  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  poorer  people:  if  through  taxation  they  help 
themselves  to  the  accumulations  of  the  great  producers, 
cannot  they  very  well  afford  to  do  without  their  bene- 
factions ?  Doubly  No :  the  less  secure  the  enterpriser 
470 r/;  Taxing  ^^  ^^  ^^®  results  of  his  enterprise,  the  more 
away  husiness        apt  he  is  to  stop  producing,  and  stop  em- 

and  benevolence,  ■,        ■  ■,    ■,  ■  ,-,  ■,  ,, 

ploying  labor — m  other  words:  the  more 
taxation  attacks  accumulations,  the  less  those  able  to 
accumulate  and  to  help  other  men  to  accumulate,  will 
care  to.  We  realized  this  principle  even  when  we 
were  talking  of  taxes  laid  on  all  alike,  but  of  course  it 
would  be  vastly  more  effective  when  taxes  are  laid  with 
special  force  against  what  people  can  manage  to  do 
without:  then  the  great  producer  would  discharge  his 
hands  as  soon  as  he  had  money  enough. 

The  other  consideration  alluded  to,  against  the  com- 
munity helping  itself  to  the  accumulations  of  the  rich 
rather  than  waiting  for  their  voluntary  benefactions, 
is  that  it  would  embitter  the  feeling  of  those  able  to 
help,  against  those  who  need  help ;  and  this  is  destructive 
of  the  best  interests  of  all  concerned.  Where  willing- 
ness to  help  is  changed  into  reluctance  to  help,  and 
embittered  reluctance  at  that,  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
the  ablest  part  of  the  community  would  find  plenty  of 
ways  to  avoid  helping.  Communities  who  have  begun 
to  alienate  their  wealthy  people,  have  found  them 
traveling  off  to  wiser  communities,  and  taking  their 
wealth  with  them.  Ohio  has  not  made  much  by 
driving  the  Standard  Oil  Company  out  of  the  state,  or 
Massachusetts  by  driving  out  the  headquarters  of  the 


570  Taxation.  [§470/ 

Bell  Telephone  Company.  Neither  has  a  certain  Swiss 
canton  by  driving  one  of  its  wealthiest  citizens  to 
America.  True,  the  first  two  of  those  things  were 
net  done  by  taxation,  but  by  foolish  legislation;  it 
may  as  well  have  been  taxation,  tho,  as  anything  else. 
The  t-rouble  would  not  stop  at  emigration,  however, 
and  much  less  at  bitterness  on  one  side:  that  is  sure 
to  engender  bitterness  on  the  other  side;  this  reacts 
again,  and  so  on  interminably,  until  we  reach  the 
Roman  social  wars,  and  the  French  Revolution,  with 
the  destruction  of  everything  the  community  values. 
A70(m).  Character-  They  have  progTcssive  income-taxes  in 
istic  of  militarism,  gome  leading  European  states  now,  and 
there  are  much  more  active  signs  of  social  war  there 
than  here.  Those  nations  are  full  of  socialism,  and 
the  only  logical  conclusion  of  socialism,  if  it  is  pushed  to 
its  logical  conclusion,  is,  as  Spencer  declared,  social  war. 
..,„,,„     .  ,         The  American  experience  is  that  during 

A70(n).  Heaviest  .  A  » 

on  those  least  able  the  civil  war,  the  mcome-tax,  tho  clearly 
to  bear  It.  unconstitutional    (466  e,    466/),    was    re- 

ligiously paid  by  most  widows,  orphans  and  patriots ; 
and  profanely  laughed  at  by  many  other  people.  Per- 
haps half  of  what  the  law  called  for  was  paid.  The 
tax  of  '94,  there  being  no  war  on,  was  declared  uncon- 
stitutional by  the  Supreme  Court.  There  have  been 
income-taxes  in  some  of  the  states,  of  which  only  one 
or  two  survive  as  fruitless  relics  of  an  ignorant  but  con- 
fiding past. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  among  the  other  leading  nations, 
income-taxes  are  actually  associated  to-day,  on  the 
whole,  with  the  militant  grade  of  civilization,  tho 
Switzerland  has  them,  and  Russia  and  France  have 
not.  If  the  support  of  immense  standing  armies 
were  not  forced  upon  England,  Germany  and  Italy,  the 
income-tax  would  probably  not  be  needed  or  tolerated 
by  them. 

In  Italy  the  tax  pays  a  little  smaller  proportion  of 
the  revenue  than  in  England;  but  Italy  is  so  poor  that, 
just  or  unjust,  the  tax  is  felt  to  be  a  stem  necessity.  In 
Germany  it  has  yielded  very  well,  but  through  despotic 


§47i]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.     ,  571 

methods  of  collection  that  Americans  would  never  endure. 
In  Switzerland  the  Canton  de  Vaud  has  adopted  it  under 
its  progressive  form,  and  is  already  driving  away 
capital  and  industry.  It  does  not  amount  to  anything 
in  the  rest  of  Europe.  In  France  and  Russia  it  does  not 
exist  as  a  national  tax. 

In  England,  where  it  works  better  than 
3ai«SS  anywhere  else  but  Germany,  the  income- 
tax  supplies  only  one  sixth  of  the  national 
revenue;  and  altho,  the  world  over,  people  without 
any  incomes  to  tax  are  of  course  fiercely  agitating  for 
income-taxes,  the  weight  of  intelligent  opinion,  while 
acknowledging  their  ideal  justice,  is  against  them,  as 
practically  a  great  injustice.  Its  abolition  was  among 
the  unfulfilled  promises  of  several  Gladstone  adminis- 
trations. Gladstone,  who  by  an  unprecedented  com- 
bination of  economic  insight,  training  and  experience 
was  better  able  to  judge  an  income-tax  than  any  other 
man  who  ever  lived,  said:  "It  does  more  than  any 
other  tax  to  demoralize  and  corrupt  the  people."  And 
even  his  chronic  opponent  Disraeli  agreed  with  him  on 
this  topic  so  far  as  to  say:  "The  odious  features  of 
this  tax  cannot  be  modified."  Thorold  Rogers  said: 
"Every  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  has  condemned  it 
in  principle  and  [from  necessity]  followed  it  in  practice." 
In  the  face  of  such  authority,  the  knowledge  and 
the  motives  of  anybody  favoring  an  income-tax  as 
other  than  an  emergency  measure,  can  hardly  both 
be  above  suspicion. 

471.  Inheritance-     The   same   can  justly   be   said   of   Inheri- 
taxes.  tance-taxes.     They  can  easily  be  avoided 

by  gift  before  death,  and  even  when  they  are  not,  they 
are  not  only  open  to  all  the  objections  against  the 
other  inquisitorial  taxes — as  putting  premiums  on  lying, 
but,  unless  they  are  restricted  to  collateral  inheritance, 
they  are  at  the  expense  of  the  widow  and  the  orphan 
at  the  very  time  they  lose  the  husband  and  father 
whom  they  have  depended  upon  to  mieet  their  expenses. 
Moreover,  the  widows  and  orphans  pay  more  than 


572  Taxation.  [§  471 

their  share  of  such  a  tax,  becaiise  they  are  not  as  able 
Hars  as  other  inheritors — in  fact  they  are  generally 
represented  by  executors  or  administrators  who  will 
not  lie  for  them  at  all. 

But  inheritance-taxes  are  not-  all  imposed  on  the 
widow  and  orphan.  Sometimes  there  is  no  immediate 
family  to  inherit,  and  except  when  collateral  heirs  have 
A-iA,  ^  n  I,  4^    I  been  dependent  on  the  decedent,  the  col- 

471  (a).  Collateral  .     h    ^        . ,  ,  .  ,11 

not  very  lateral  inheritance-tax  is  among  the  less 

objectiona  le.  objectionable  of  the  inquisitorial  taxes. 
A  man  is  apt  to  feel  more  free  with  a  sudden  windfall 
than  with  slow  and  laborious  gains — more  apt  to  pay 
a  tax  on  it  without  lying,  and  better  able  to  afford  it. 
AjUb),  conciu-  The    entire    tax,    direct    and   collateral, 

*""'*•  never  yielded  much,  and  it  is  doubtful  if 

it  ever  will  yield  enough  to  justify  bothering  the  com- 
munity and  paying  the  collectors.  Sometimes  when 
a  very  rich  man  dies,  the  figures  look  large,  but  comparing 
the  total  with  the  total  of  taxation,  they  are  insignificant. 
The  New  York  Evening  Post  in  June,  1906,  said: 

"Inheritance  taxes  are  the  favored  remedy  jtist  now  for  the 
ills  of  aggregated  wealth,  and  the  Massachusetts  Labor  Bureau 
has  done  a  timely  service  by  bringing  together  in  its  May 
bulletin  the  facts  as  to  the  present  status  of  the  inheritance- 
tax  in  this  country.  Only  thirteen  of  the  States  and  Territories 
are  now  without  a  tax  of  some  sort  upon  inheritances.  But  at 
present  these  taxes  constitute  neither  a  means  for  the  dispersal 
of  swollen  fortunes,  nor  an  item  of  much  importance  in  the 
public  revenues.  New  York  State,  which  collected  $5,010,434 
in  1905  from  the  estates  of  5,431  decedents,  stands  far  ahead  of 
the  rest.  The  only  other  State  which  receives  so  much  as  a 
million  is  Pennsylvania,  with  $1,677,185  for  3,600  decedents. 
The  whole  amount  collected,  the  country  over,  seems  to  be 
somewhat  more  than  ten  and  one-half  million  dollars.  So,  in 
the  collection  of  a  tax  which  everybody  believes  in,  the  year's 
actual  returns  for  thirty-two  States  and  Territories  would  only 
keep  New  York  City  going  for  a  month." 


CHAPTER   XL. 

INQUISITORIAL    DIRECT    TAXES    (CONTINUED). 

Personal-Property  Tax. 

Now  assuming  that  a  man  produces  his  own  income, 
and  reflecting  that  the  business  processes  on  which 
stamp-taxes  have  been  collected,  are  also  generally  pro- 
ductive, there  remains  one  objection  common  to  all 
the  taxes  but  the  inheritance-tax,  that  we  have  so  far 
considered:  they  are  taxes  on  production,  and  there- 
fore tend  to  obstruct  it,  and  to  restrict  the  community's 
prosperity. 

472,  Personal-  Yet  instead  of  taxing  production,  to  tax 

property  taxes.  only  property  already  accumulated  would 
discourage  saving,  but  perhaps  no  more  than  the  taxes 
we  have  already  considered,  discourage  producing;  and 
it  would  not  be  all  the  time  bothering  people  while  they 
are  trying  to  do  their  work,  as  do  most  of  the  taxes  we 
have  so  far  considered.  A  direct  tax  on  accumulated 
property,  then,  would  seem  better  than  any  tax  that 
we  have  discussed,  and  in  some  respects  it  is,  but  we 
shall  find  some  in  which  it  certainly  is  not. 

Then  let  us  consider  accumulated  property  under  the 
usual  two  divisions  of  personalty  and  realty. 
M2<a),  Uncertain       Now  not  all  taxcs  on  personal  property 
of  diffusion.  are  incapable  of  diffusion.     Of  course  all 

taxes  tend  to  diffuse  themselves  and  become  indirect :  any 
man ,  whether  a  landlord ,  a  money-lender,  a  manufacturer 
or  a  mere  exchanger,  will  naturally  charge  his  taxes 
to  his  customers  if  he  can;  so  personal  property  per- 
manently used  in  business   (as  well  as  that  produced 

573 


574  Taxation.  [§  472a 

to  be  immediately  exchanged,  which  we  have  already 
considered)  can  often  pass  on  its  taxes  to  the  consumer. 
A  man  using  machinery  or  keeping  a  livery  stable, 
for  instance,  can  generally  take  the  taxes  on  his  plant 
into  account  when  he  fixes  his  prices  (464-464  h) .  Com- 
petition will  not  always  prevent  him  charging  in  his 
taxes.  Some  writers  are  very  fond  of  reasoning  that 
it  will,  but  it  is  hard  to  see  why  competition  should  pre- 
vent his  charging  in  his  taxes,  any  more  than  his  in- 
surance or  even  his  clerk-hire.  So  far,  then,  as  the 
man  paying  such  taxes  can  be  like  the  man  paying 
duties  and  excises — a  sort  of  buffer  to  pass  them  on 
easily  through  the  community,  it  seems  eminently  prac- 
ticable to  tax  personal  property. 

But  there  are  grave  questions  of  its  ideal 
dlUi'Jtaxathn°  justicc.  It  is  vcry  apt  to  make  the  same 
property  pay  taxes  twice.  At  first  sight 
it  seems  plain  that  if  a  man  enjoys  a  fortune  in  such 
personal  property  as  stocks,  bonds,  promissory  notes, 
mortgages,  etc.,  he  ought  to  contribute  just  as  much 
to  the  government  as  a  man  with  an  equal  fortune  in 
real  estate.  But  the  fact  is  that  he  would  contribute 
even  if  he  were  not  directly  taxed,  and  that  if  he  is 
directly  taxed,  he  contributes,  to  some  extent,  a  second 
time,  either  for  himself  or  somebody  else:  for  stocks, 
bonds  and  mortgages  are  only  bits  of  paper  showing  that 
a  man  has  an  interest  in  property  that  already  pays  taxes 
wherever  it  may  be  located.  The  property  of  all  cor- 
porations, including,  of  course,  their  real  estate,  is 
taxed.  So  far,  however,  as  earning  power  or  "good- 
will" is  represented  in  stocks  and  bonds  (and  that  is 
sometimes  very  far),  it  is  apt  to  be  taxed  but  once. 

Corporations  generally  pay  taxes  before  declaring 
dividends,  and  therefore  some  states  are  wise  and  just 
enough  not  to  tax  stocks;  and  there  is  a  growing  ten- 
dency to  abolish  taxes  on  all  the  mere  evidences  of 
indebtedness  just  alluded  to. 

Moreover,  a  man  owning  only  personal  property,  is 
apt  to  pay  a  real-estate  tax  anyhow :  if  he  sleeps  or  eats 


§  47 2^]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  575 

or  does  business  under  a  roof,  and  pays  for  the  right, 
he  really  pays  part  of  the  taxes  of  the  men  who  have 
rea  1  estate.  Unless  the  man  who  appears  to  pay  the  taxes 
on  any  building,  uses  it  entirely  himself,  or  it  stands 
vacant,  he  does  not  (as  we  shall  see  later)  really  pay  all 
the  taxes,  any  more  than  a  man  who  first  pays  a  duty 
or  an  excise:  the  tax  usually  distributes  itself,  and  is 
really  indirect.  As  a  rule,  tenants  of  buildings  really 
pay  the  taxes  on  them:  so  it  is  not  true  that  unless 
they  own  real  estate  or  pay  personal  taxes,  they  pay 
none  at  all.  For  this  reason,  among  many  others,  the 
argument  that  fairness  requires  taxing  personal  property, 
does  not  amount  to  nearly  so  much  as  it  seems. 

There  is  still  another  very  great  danger  of  duplication. 
Everybody  knows  where  real  estate  is,  and  there  it  is 
taxed.  But  there  is  an  old  principle  that  personal 
property  follows  the  owner,  which  breeds  a  tendency  to 
tax  bonds,  promissory  notes  and  other  evidences  of 
credit  at  the  residence  of  the  creditor.  There  is  a  con- 
flicting principle,  however,  that  they  should  be  taxed 
at  the  situation  (technically  the  sittis)  of  the  property 
on  which  they  are  based.  This  often  leads  to  their 
being  taxed  in  both  places.  There  is  a  case  of  a 
Western  lady  in  Massachusetts,  cited  by  Wells,  which 
covers  more  than  one  point  we  have  been  going  over. 
She  wanted  to  be  in  an  educational  town,  and  helped 
its  tax-roll  by  building  a  fine  house.  Her  personal 
property  was  held  by  a  trustee  in  Indiana,  and  taxed 
to  him  there.  But  it  appears  to  have  consisted  largely 
of  bonds  on  property  in  another  state,  where  it  was 
taxed  again — that  being  the  only  place  where  it  should 
have  been  taxed  at  all.  When  she  had  got  comfortably 
settled  in  Massachusetts,  she  was  requested  to  pay  a 
third  time  there — a  tax  on  her  income.  She  said: 
"This  will,  if  enforced,  be  a  decree  of  my  personal 
banishment  from  the  state  as  effectual  as  that  which  the 
state  formerly  launched  against  Roger  Williams  and  the 
Quakers  "  (470  /,  470  o,  472  d). 

472  (c).  Effect  on  Suppose  there  are  two  townships  side 
prosperity.  ]^y  gide,  One  of  which  taxes  personal  prop- 


576  Taxation.  [§472C 

erty,  and  the  other  does  not.  Other  things  even, 
the  effect,  as  between  -them,  will  be  that,  as  personal 
property — farm-tools,  cattle,  machinery,  merchandise, 
of  course  will  prefer  the  township  where  they  are 
not  taxed:  one  town  will  grow  richer  in  personal  prop- 
erty, and  the  other  grow  poorer  (470  I,  470  o,  472  b). 
That  will  benefit  the  richer  town,  as  far  as  taxes  are 
concerned,  even  if  personal  property  is  not  taxed, 
because  the  employment  of  all  this  personal  property 
on  the  real  estate,  in  developing  faiins,  factories  and 
commerce,  will  be  an  influence  to  make  the  real  estate 
more  valuable — ^will  develop  wealth  that  can  pay  more 
taxes.  Moreover,  as  the  chances  to  develop  this  wealth 
will  attract  more  people  from  outside,  their  competition 
for  land  will  also  raise  its  price.  So,  for  twofold  rea- 
sons, the  taxes  can  best  be  raised  from  the  land,  with- 
out taxing  and  driving  away  the  personal  property 
which  has  made  the  real  estate  valuable.  The  value 
of  real  estate  usually  depends  upon  bringing  and  using 
personal  property  upon  or  near  it.  That  is  true  even 
of  a  mine,  especially  under  modern  conditions.  You  can- 
not work  one  without  tools,  and  under  modem  condi- 
tions you  cannot  often  work  profitably  without  very 
good  tools — chemical  as  well  as  mechanical:  if  you  do, 
your  competitor,  who  works  with  them,  will  get  out 
more  minerals  for  the  same  money,  and  undersell  you. 
But  it  may  be  asked :  how  can  Wall  Street  property 
be  valuable  on  this  principle:  there  is  no  farming  or 
mining  or  manufacturing  and  merchandising  there? 
There  is  certainly  merchandising:  for  the  railroads  and 
many  mines  and  industrial  establishments  are  sold, 
partly  or  entirely,  over  and  over  again  there,  every 
year;  and  if  making  a  bankrupt  affair  into  a  paying 
one  (or  sometimes,  alas!  a  paying  one  into  a  bank- 
rupt one)  or  making  a  big  effective  concern  out  of 
several  little  ineffective  ones — if  making  any  of  these 
things,  is  manufacturing,  there  is  certainly  manufac- 
turing done  there.  Take  out  of  Wall  Street  the  money, 
shares  and  bonds,  dealt  in  and  reorganized  there, 
unless  you  brought  in  some  other  personal  property  to 


§472C^]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  577 

take  their  place,  the  real  estate  would  not  be  worth  as 
much  as  a  poor  farm  of  the  same  size,  and  could  not 
pay  as  much  in  taxes. 

Mr.  Ensley  *  summed  up  the  bearing  of  these  facts 
on  taxation  by  saying :  "  Never  tax  anything  that  would 
be  of  value  to  your  State,  that  could  and  would  run 
away,  or  that  could  and  would  come  to  you."  In  other 
words,  never  tax  any  movable  property. 
472  crf;  Personal  As  to  the  practicability  of  collectingtaxcs 
property  hard  to  on  personal  property:  except  machinery, 
or  appraise,  merchandise  and  farm  products,  most  of 
such  property  is  very  hard  to  find.  Money  and  all  sorts 
of  securities  are  seldom  seen  by  anybody  but  the  owner. 

Taxes  are  not  paid  on  any  bonds  to  speak  of;  a 
striking  evidence  is  shown  in  the  prices  of  bonds  and 
stocks.  Stocks,  as  said  before,  are  not  always  subject 
to  taxation,  the  taxes  being  paid  by  the  companies 
before  dividends  are  declared,  while  bonds  are  subject 
to  a  taxation  which,  if  paid,  would  absorb  from  a  third 
to  a  half  of  the  income  they  yield:  yet  while  there  is 
a  difference  in  the  prices  of  stocks  and  bonds,  there  is 
no  such  difference  as  there  would  have  to  be  if  the 
taxes  on  bonds  were  actually  paid.  In  other  words: 
people  owning  them,  do  not  generally  confess  the  fact 
to  the  assessors. 

Moreover,  all  these  things  are  changing  hands  so 
constantly  that  unless  an  impossible  army  of  appraisers 
attends  to  them  all  at  the  same  instant,  many  of  them 
must  be  appraised  at  different  times  in  different  hands. 

Even  if  public  lists  of  personal  property  could  be 
had  and  kept,  like  those  of  real  estate,  the  assessors 
could  appraise  well,  only  stocks  and  bonds  sold  at  the 
exchanges,  and  the  simplest  sort  of  tools  and  produce, 
like  the  farmer's.  In  regard  to  a  great  factory  or  a 
great  merchant's  stock,  or  a  rich  man's  furniture  and 
pictures,  the  assessor  is  no  judge  of  values.  He  usually 
tries  to  get  at  them  by  making  the  taxpa5^er  give  a 
list  of  his  property  and  its  value.     The  effect  of  this 

*  "What  Should  be  Taxed,  and  How  it  Should  be  Taxed." 


57S  Taxation.  [§472(f 

method  on  both  nonest  men  and  rogues  is  ahnost  as 
bad  a  premium  on  lying  as  the  income-tax:  rogues — • 
and  not  very  great  rogues  at  that — evade  it,  and  honest 
men  have  to  pay  the  rogues'  share.  Nay,  as  already 
illustrated,  in  this  regard,  men  honest  in  other  regards 
often  play  the  part  of  the  rogues. 

Lying  is  far  from  the  only  way  of  avoiding  taxation 
of  personal  property.  In  the  comparatively  few  cases 
where  cities  still  try  to  tax  it,  the  rich  city  man  makes 
his  "legal  residence"  at  his  country  home,  where  taxes 
are  light,  and  even  makes  that  country  home  in  some 
other  state,  if  his  actual  state  taxes  personalty  more 
rigorously  than  some  neighboring  state.  Corporations 
do  likewise  (470  I). 

If  we  were  to  cease  the  folly  of  trying 
Vuthor'itie'sand  directly  to  tax  personal  property,  we 
operation  of  natu-  ^ould  not  thus  throw  all  the  direct  taxes 

ral  laws,  ,  ,        .,, 

upon  real  estate:  there  would  still  remain 
the  other  direct  inquisition-taxes,  and  the  franchise- 
taxes,  not  to  speak  of  the  indirect  taxes — if  we  think 
indirect  taxes  better  than  direct  taxes  on  personal 
property,  incomes  and  inheritances;  but  that  is  very 
doubtful.  As  to  franchises,  we  will  consider  them 
later. 

The  real-estate  owners  most  given  to  considering 
such  subjects — the  great  financiers  and  real -estate 
owners  of  the  cities,  almost  all  favor  abolishing  taxes 
on  personal  property,  and  this  in  spite  of  such  a  step 
tending  to  throw  the  burdens  over  upon  real  estate. 
Their  position  is  that  not  only  is  the  personal  tax  a 
bad  tax,  but  that  if  the  fifth  (roughly  speaking)  of  the 
total  taxation  which  is  now  collected  from  personal 
property,  were  added  to  the  four-fifths  now  collected 
from  real  estate,  they  would  not  as  a  rule  have  to  pay 
any  more  than  they  pay  now,  but  simply  pay  it  all  out 
of  one  pocket  instead  of  some  out  of  the  other.  The 
entire  abolition  of  the  personal  tax  is  seriously  proposed 
not  only  by  virtually  the  ablest  business  men,  but  also 
by  virtually  all  of  the  best  writers  and  commissions. 


§  472  <^]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  579 

Even  the  practice  of  most  of  the  intelligent  world 
regarding  personal  taxes,  has  come  to  be  such  that  they 
are  fast  disappearing  from  intelligent  communities. 
They  have  been  abandoned  in  Europe,  except  as  in- 
volved in  income-taxes. 

The  census  of  1900  gives  the  real  property  of  the 
United  States  at  about  thirty-nine  billion,  and  the 
personal  at  about  twenty-six  billion,  the  personal 
being,  then,  two-fifths  of  the  whole.  Real  estate 
being  so  much  more  in  evidence,  this  is  undoubtedly 
an  underestimate  of  the  personalty,  and  most  of  the 
personalty  is  in  the  cities.  Yet  in  New  York,  Cin- 
cinnati and  San  Francisco,  tho  probably  more  per- 
sonal property  than  real  estate  is  owned  in  all  of 
them,  but  one-fifth  of  the  state  and  local  taxes  is  now 
collected  from  personal  property.  In  some  cities  less 
than  one-fiftieth  is.  In  the  most  advanced  places,  no 
effort  whatever  is  made  to  make  lists  of  personal  prop- 
erty, or  to  disprove  any  statement  any  taxpayer  may 
make  regarding  it. 

The  latest  word  on  the  subject  is  the  report  of  the 
New  York  Commission  in  January,  1907.  It  uses  the 
following  language  regarding  the  personal-property  tax : 

The  personal-property  tax  is  a  farce.  "  It  falls  inequitably 
upon  the  comparatively  few  who  are  caught.  The  burden  it 
imposes  upon  production  is  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  revenue 
jt  produces.  It  is  time  the  situation  was  faced  squarely  and 
the  tax  in  its  present  form  abolished. 

"  So  far  as  the  personal-property  tax  attempts  to  reach  in- 
tangible forms  of  wealth,  its  administration  is  so  comical  as 
to  have  become  a  by-word.  Such  a  method  of  collecting 
revenue  would  be  a  serious  menace  to  democratic  institutions 
were  it  not  so  generally  recognized  as  a  howling  farce."' 

The  Commission  states  that  the  yield  of  the  personal- 
propertv  tax  in  New  York  City  is  less  than  $3,000,000 
out  of  $28,000,000,  while  nobody  doubts  that  the  per- 
sonal property  of  the  city  exceeds  in  value  the  real 
estate.* 

*  In  Connecticut  from  1855  to  1885,  the  personal  property 
listed  for  taxation  fell  from  one-tenth  of  the  taxable  property  of 


5 So  Taxation.  [  472  ^ 

The  attempt  to  tax. personal  property  directly,  sur- 
vives most  actively  outside  of  the  cities,  and  in  states 
that  have  few  cities.  And  yet,  the  farmer  serves  his 
own  interest  very  poorly  by  resisting  the  removal  of 
the  tax.  He  may  or  may  not  be  more  honest  than  the 
city  dweller,  but  his  neighbors  know  his  affairs  better, 

the  state  to  one-thirtieth.  In  '89  a  law  was  passed  providing 
that  owners  of  securities  who  would  register  them  should  be 
taxed  but  one-fifth  of  one  per  cent,  instead  of  the  two  and  a 
half  before  levied.  The  first  year  brought  out  twenty-two 
millions  that  had  not  appeared  before. 

In  1S66  Cincinnati  paid  about  equally  on  realty  and  per- 
sonalty: in  '92  realty  paid  three  and  a  half  times  as  much  as 
personalty. 

In  1 868  in  Boston  realty  paid  about  half  as  much  again  as 
personalty:  in  '90  it  paid  over  three  times  as  much.  Of  six 
hundred  million  bonds  of  corporations  outside  the  state  known 
to  be  held  in  Boston  in  the  nineties,  only  forty-five  million  were 
taxed,  and  nearly  all  of  that  belonged  to  estates  of  widows, 
orphans,  etc.,  held  in  trust. 

In  Jersey  City  in  '92,  personalty  paid  one-thirteenth;  in  '70 
Brooklyn  reported  over  one-eleventh  personalty;  in  '93  little 
over  one-thirtieth,  and  nearly  two-thirds  of  that  from  corpora- 
tions;   in  '93  but  one  and  one-half  per  cent,  was  personalty. 

In  the  states  of  New  York,  Wisconsin  and  Georgia,  the 
attempt  to  enforce  the  laws  taxing  personalty  is  gradually 
being  abandoned. 

States  with  listing  laws  fare  little  if  any  better  than  states 
without.  In  187 1  California  made  very  stringent  laws  taxing 
personal  property.  Some  of  the  effects  were  very  funny. 
According  to  the  assessment  reports,  butter,  wool  and  honey 
were  no  longer  produced  in  counties  full  of  cows,  sheep  and 
bees,  nobody  lent  or  borrowed  any  money,  and  in  fact  two-thirds 
of  that  previously  in  the  state  disappeared.  In  five  years 
San  Francisco  paid  on  only  one-third  of  the  money  and  two- 
thirds  of  the  other  personal  property  that  she  had  paid  on 
before. 

From  1885  to  1893,  Ohio  had  a  most  stringent  listing  law,  and 
yet  the  county  containing  Cincinnati  paid  less  than  one  per  cent, 
of  its  taxes  on  personalty.  In  1892  the  people  had  $190,000,000 
in  bank  and  listed  but  $38,000,000.  The  counties  containing  the 
five  chief  cities  had  $128,000,000  in  bank  and  returned  less 
than  $7,000,000,  while  the  rural  counties  where  the  clainor  for 
personal  taxation  is  always  loudest,  had  $70,000,000  in  bank 
and  paid  taxes  on  nearly  half  of  it.  This  state  of  aftairs  led 
to  the  appointment  of  a  very  able  commission  who  reported 
that  "  the  tax  upon  personal  property  makes  farmers  pay  from 


§472^]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  581 

and  a  larger  share  of  his  personal  property  is  in  things 
like  crops,  animals  and  farm  machinery,  which  he  can- 
not conceal  or  successfully  underestimate.  It  is  there- 
fore more  difficult  for  him  to  evade  the  tax  than  for 
his  city  neighbor  to.     In  consequence  statistics  show 

jour  to  seven  dollars  where  people  in  large  cities  pay  one",  and 
they  called  the  system  "a  school  of  perjury  ",  adding:  "It  im- 
poses unjust  burdens  .  .  .  upon  the  farmer  ...  all  of  whose 
property  is  taxed  because  it  is  tangible;  upon  the  man  who  is 
scrupulously  honest;  and  upon  the  guardian,  executor  and 
trustee,  whose  accounts  are  matters  of  public  record." 

A  tax  commission  of  New  Hampshire  in  1876,  after  speaking 
of  the  "corrupting  and  demoralizing  influence"  of  attempting 
to  tax  personal  property,  "frankly  admit  that  they  are  unable 
to  frame  any  law  to  which  a  free  people  would  submit,  or  should 
be  asked  to  submit,  that  will  bring  this  class  of  property  under 
actual  assessment  more  effectually  than  it  now  is". 

An  Illinois  commission  in  1SS6  asserted  that  the  existing 
system  "is  debauching  to  the  conscience  and  subversive  of  the 
public  morals — a  school  for  perjury,  promoted  by  law". 

A  Connecticut  commission  in  1887  reported  that  "the  results 
of  an  investigation  of  nearly  three  years  into  the  workings  of 
our  tax  system  have  brought  us  to  the  conclusion  that  all 
items  of  intangible  property  ought  to  be  struck  out  of  the  list. 
As  the  law  stands  it  may  be  a  burden  upon  the  conscience  of 
m^any,  but  it  is  a  burden  on  the  property  of  the  few,  not  because 
there  are  few  who  ought  to  pay,  but  because  there  are  few 
who  can  be  made  to  pay". 

A  West  Virginia  commission  in  1884  asserted  that  "the  pay- 
ment of  the  tax  on  personalty"  (in  the  state)  "is  almost  as  vol- 
untary, and  is  considered  pretty  much  in  the  same  light  as  dona- 
tions to  the  neighboring  church  or  a  Sunday-school". 

In  Massachusetts  the  most  intelligent  officials  admit  that 
their  system  is  a  comparative  failure. 

Wells  (from  whom  the  foregoing  is  condensed)  calls  the  sys- 
tem one  "which  powerfully  contributes  to  arrest  and  hinder 
natural  development,  to  corrupt  society,  and  is  without  a 
parallel  in  any  country  claiming  to  be  civilized  ".  And  he  says 
elsewhere :  ' '  There  is  not  a  single  economist  or  financier  of  note 
.   .   .  who  upholds  the  system." 

Seligman  says:  "In  recent  years  in  both  England  and  France 
the  necessity  of  raising  increased  revenue  has  drawn  especial 
attention  to  the  subject  of  local  taxation;  but  in  neither  of 
these  two  countries  has  any  prominent  writer  or  speaker  advo- 
cated the  direct  taxation  of  personal  property,  or  even  alluded 
to  the  subject  except  to  scout  the  very  idea  of  such  a  proposi- 
tion." 


582  Taxation.  [§472/ 

472  r/;.  Showing  that  in  the  states  where  the  farmers  have 
of  statistics.  kept  up  active  attempts  to  tax  personal 

property,  they  generally  pay  most  of  the  personal- 
property  taxes  themselves,  while  city  people  avoid  them. 

If  the  farmers  did  not  pay  personal  taxes,  they  would 
have  to  pay  more  on  their  farms,  it  is  true,  but  not 
as  much  more  as  they  now  pay  in  personal  taxes: 
because  the  present  city  personal-property  tax,  which 
the  farms  would  then  help  to  pay,  is  relatively  much 
smaller  than  the  rural  personal-property  tax,  which 
city  real  estate  would  then  help  to  pay. 

The  objections  to  the  personal-property  tax  are  not 
yet  understood  throughout  the  country  generally:  If 
they  were,  the  tax  would  be  abolished.  .  In  many 
places  people  are  still  working  away  at  all  sorts  of 
hopeless  devices  to  get  personal  taxes  fairly  and  fully 
paid.  The  favorite  remedy  for  the  difficulties  of  the 
tax,  proposed  by  those  who  favor  it,  is  one  worthy  of 
the  other  features  of  the  tax — "pub- 
fj'-  'afooiis"i  "^''  licity ' ' — the  pet  remedy  for  malfeasance  in 
fooTsVend"" '^  office.  This  is  an  acknowledgment  that 
the  tax  does  its  best  to  make  scoundrels. 
This  publicity  is  sought  by  putting  lists  of  personal 
assessments  in  the  newspapers.  But  that  is  the  same 
sort  of  invasion  of  privacy  that  is  one  of  the  reasons 
against  the  income-tax.  And  it  has  no  effect:  there 
are  too  many  respectable  delinquents  (470c):  but  peo- 
ple who  advocate  foolish  things,  always  have  to  carry 
them  out  by  foolish  methods. 

472 r/i;.  "Honw-  As  scorning  foul  blows,  even  against 
geneity" fallacy.  fQ^j  things,  wc  may  as  well  notc  here  a 
fallacy  regarding  these  inquisition-taxes  which  has  been 
iirged  against  them  by  high  authority,  and  we  may  as 
well  guard  against  weakening  our  case  by  its  use.  It 
has  been  urged,  especially  against  the  personal-property 
tax  and  the  income-tax,  that  neither  can  be  fairly  laid, 
because  personal  property  or  income  is  not  "homo- 
geneous"— a  jaw-breaking  way  of  saying  that  the 
things  which  make  up  either,  are  not  all  produced  in 


§472'^']  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  583 

the  same  way — are  not  of  the  same  kind,  and  conse- 
quently cannot  fairly  be  taxed  in  the  same  way  (470  g). 
As  an  illustration:  personal  property  may  be,  for  in- 
stance, machinery,  which  constantly  deteriorates,  or 
interest-bearing  securities  which,  despite  occasional 
fluctuations,  tend  on  the  whole  to  advance:  because 
as  the  rate  of  interest  has  been  gradually  decreasing, 
securities  yielding  a  given  rate  have  gradually  become 
worth  more.  Income,  too,  may  proceed  from  either  of 
these  sources — one  much  more  reliable  than  the  other, 
or  from  personal  effort,  which,  it  is  contended,  ought 
not  to  be  taxed  at  all,  as  interest  or  dividends  ought. 
The  fallacy  is  in  restricting  the  objection,  to  taxes  on 
such  things:  it  holds  against  even  tlie  land-tax  itself. 
Land  is  as  various  as  almost  anything  else — it  is  used 
for  a  million  purposes,  and  for  none  at  all;  it  deterio- 
rates— the  best  tobacco  lands  of  Cuba  are  exhausted, 
and  there  is  no  known  way  of  restoring  their  peculiar 
virtues;  it  appreciates — in  many  a  place  where,  fifty 
years  ago,  it  could  not  be  given  away,  it  is  now  worth 
millions  an  acre.  No  class  of  subjects  for  taxation  can 
be  homogeneous.  Taxation  has  to  be  done  "by  and 
large" — it  is  one  of  the  cases  where  "The  law  cannot 
take  note  of  trifles". 

472  (i).  Effect  on  Tho  the  world  (at  least  the  thinking 
co>-oorations.  p^rt  of  it)  admits  that  the  taxation  of 
individual  personalty  is  a  failure  and  a  wrong,  yet 
when  the  property  belongs  to  a  corporation,  many  think 
that  it  can  be  taxed  wisely.  Perhaps  it  can  be  more 
wisely  than  the  personal  property  of  individuals  can, 
altho  corporations  can  hide  their  personal  property, 
and  lie  about  it,  as  easily  as  individuals  can.  But  as 
corporations  are  under  direct  government  control, 
appraisers  can  examine  their  books  and  get  a  knowledge 
of  their  affairs  more  readily  than  they  can  those  of  private 
parties:  so  their  property  can  be  taxed  more  exactly. 
But  that  it  a  poor  reason  for  doing  it — for  putting 
them  at  a  disadvantage  as  compared  with  individuals. 
It   only    affects    their   personal   property    anyhow:  for 


584  Taxation.  [§  472:/ 

their  real  estate  cannot  be  taxed  more  readily  than 
anybody's  else.  So  their  case  is  simply  one  more 
illustratijon  of  the  injustice  always  springing  from 
taxing  personal  property. 

472  (j).  Cause  of  Much  of  the  clamor  for  taxing  corporations 
prejudice.  comcs  from   the  less  intelligent  employees 

of  corporations — of  railroads  and  the  like,  who  have 
had  strikes  and  similar  troubles  with  the  corporations, 
and  so  comprehend  all  corporations  in  an  unreasoning 
hate.  This  rage  for  taxing  corporations  has  done  much 
harm — it  has  obstructed  many  an  important  enter- 
prise, and  it  has  even  led  the  poor  in  some  states  to 
tax  their  own  little  savings  in  the  savings-banks,  because, 
forsooth,  savings-banks  are  "corporations". 

Yet  there  is  a  sound  basis  for  the  demand 
Vig 'franchise  and  to  tax  Corporations,  so  far  as  the  demand 
non-franchise        discriminates    bctwccn    corporations    con- 

corporations.  ,,r  i-  i,  i 

trollmg public  iranchises,  and  those  engaged 
in  ordinary  business.  But  of  course  there  is  no  more 
reason  for  heavily  taxing  an  ordinary  business  conducted 
by  a  few  men  incorporated,  than  if  the  same  men  were 
partners.  It  is  true  that  they  do  get  some  special  privi- 
leges from  the  state  (140-1406)  and  impose  some  little 
special  labors  upon  it ;  but  these  are  generally  paid  for 
by  special  fees,  and  should  hardly  be  included  among 
objects   of   taxation.  But    as   to    the   franchises   of 

corporations,  we  have  already  seen  good  reason  for  tax- 
ing them,  altho  they  do  falsely  seem  at  first  sight  to  be 
personal  property,  as  their  value  is  represented  in  bonds 
and  stocks;  moreover,  as  these  bonds  and  stocks  are 
constantly  sold  in  public,  their  value  is  easy  to  get  at. 
But  getting  at  the  real  value  of  franchises  is  not  as 
simple  as  it  appears :  doctors  disagree  a  good  deal  about 
it,  the  it  can  undoubtedly  be  done.  As  there  is  a  grow- 
ing tendency  to  grant  franchises  only  on  condition  that 
they  can  be  bought  back  by  the  government  at  a  valu- 
ation, importance  is  to  be  attached  to  an  ingenious 
scheme  for  getting  at  their  value  and  at  the  same  time 
ensuring  their  proper  taxation,  which  has  been  pro- 
posed by  Mayor  Cutler  of  Rochester.      It  is  that  the 


§472^]  Inquisitorial  Direct  Taxes.  585 

price  to  be  paid,  in  case  the  community  buys  them 
back,  shall  be  the  sum  on  which  they  are  paying  taxes. 
A  franchise  is  not  really  personal  property,  even  to 
the  extent  that  we  saw  (140  r)  stocks  and  bonds  are: 
it  is  always  in  some  way  or  other  inseparable  from  the 
land.  We  will  farther  consider  franchises  then,  in  con- 
nection with  the  land,  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER   XLL 

OBVIOUS    DIRECT    TAXES. 

I.  The  Realty -Taxes  in  General. 

We  seem  now  to  have  considered,  and  found  ill 
smted  for  the  purpose,  every  important  object  of  taxa- 
tion except  the  most  obvious  of  all — the  one  object 
that  cannot  be  hidden  or  carried  out  of  jurisdiction,  or 
successfully  lied  about.  It  is  Real  Estate. 
473,  Objections  to  Yet  there  are  merits  of  some  of  the  other 
Reaity-taxes.  taxes  which   a  tax   on  realty   must  lack. 

Real  estate  is  more  apt  to  lie  unproductive  than  most 
other  kinds  of  property.  And  moreover,  a  tax  on  it 
cannot  have  the  ease  of  the  indirect  taxes,  or,  perhaps, 
stimulate  saving  quite  as  they  and  the  other  taxes  on 
consumption  do. 

MZ(a).  Their  Among  primitive  peoples,  the  realty  did 

history.  j^ot  pay  any  tax,  at  least  directly  as  a  tax: 

in  fact,  hardly  anything  like  a  tax  had  been  evolved — 
or  for  that  matter,  anything,  like  what  we  now  know  as 
government.  But  in  the  tribal  stage,  there  are  generally 
contributions  of  produce  from  real  estate,  for  the  sup- 
port of  the  chief;  tho  as  everything  is  supposed  to  be 
his,  such  contributions  are  more  like  rent  than  taxes. 
In  the  communal  stage,  too,  a  share  of  produce  has  gen- 
erally been  collected  for  government,  but  as  the  land 
belongs  to  the  community,  this  contribution,  too,  is 
rather  by  way  of  rent  than  tax.  In  the  feudal  stage, 

the  sovereign  still  owned  the  land:  so  anything  that 
was    said  on  account  of  it,  was  strictly  rent,  tho  he 

S86 


§  473  ^]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  587 

devoted  some  of  the  proceeds  to  his  wars,  and  perhaps 
to  the  few  other  matters  of  pubHc  interest  then  existing. 
After  the  nobles  began  to  get  the  fee  of  the  land,  of 
course  what  the  owner  in  fee  simple  (88)  paid  the 
government,  he  paid  as  taxes.  Among  our  English 
ancestors,  the  first  germ  of  a  fee  simple,  was  the  first 
germ  of  a  tax  in  the  modern  sense — when  Henry  II. 
accepted  scutage  in  lieu  of  military  service  (56  a).  On 
the  other  hand,  in  France,  under  the  old  regime,  up  to 
the  Revolution,  the  nobles  owned  most  of  the  land, 
but  paid  no  taxes. 

The  actual  taxation  of  land,  then,  as  distinct  from 
rent  to  the  sovereign,  certainly  appears  to  be  a  com- 
paratively modern  institution.  That  would  appear 
473  cfe;.  Incidental  to  indicate  that  the  tax  on  land  is  more 
tohighciuiiization.  civifizcd  than  earher  taxes,  or  than  even 
the  ingenious  indirect  taxes — especially  so  far  as  the  in- 
direct taxes  were  started  in  various  countries  by  the 
representatives  of  the  people,  to  get  a  tax  that  the  nobles 
would  have  to  pay.  This  must  have  been  very  often 
because  the  nobles  had  all  the  power  and  all  the  land, 
and  would  not  let  taxes  be  laid  against  the  land.  The 
land-tax  must  to  that  extent  be  a  later  evolution,  and 
really  one  of  the  marks  of  liberty  and  progress. 

473  re;.  Question  Now  let  us  see  if  that  idea  is  supported 
of  diffusion.  |3y   other    facts.     We    have    already    said 

that  direct  taxes  tend  to  diffuse  themselves  and  become 
indirect.  Of  course  they  are  least  apt  to  diffuse  them- 
selves on  the  things  where  it  is  the  hardest  for  the 
first  payer  to  pass  them  on  to  somebody  else ;  or  where 
there  is  least  temptation  to  do  so.  And  the  least 
temptation  to  try  to  pass  them  on,  is  of  course  with 
things  whose  range  of  prices  is  so  great  that  the  cus- 
tomer can  readily  avoid  the  tax  by  putting  up  with 
cheaper  things.  Now  the  one  absolutely  essential  thing 
that  varies  most  in  price  is  land:  some  of  it  is  worth 
nothing  at  all;  some  of  it  sells  for  hundreds  of  dollars 
a  square  foot. 

Then  if  a  new  tax  is  put  on  land  which  is  farmed, 


588  Taxation.  I§  473  <^ 

473  w.  Views  of  the  old  economists — Adam  Smith,  Ricardo, 
economists.  John  Stuart  Mill  and  others,  said  that  the 

man  occupying  it  would  naturally  seek  some  land  cheaper 
by  at  least  the  amount  of  the  tax — -he  might  even  go  to 
land  worth  substantially  nothing.  But  the  new  econo- 
mists say  that  a  man  naturally  stays  at  home — that 
473  re;.  Fact  competition  between  pieces  of  land  is  not 
versus  theory.  perfectly  fluid,  but  on  the  contrary  is 
subject  to  a  good  deal  of  the  friction  we  have  spoken  of 
before  (464) ;  that  often  a  man  would  be  apt  to  be  pre- 
vented from  going  to  a  piece  cheaper  (by  the  amount 
of  the  tax)  than  the  one  he  occupies,  because  of  the 
expense  of  moving,  or  by  already  having  buildings  and 
other  things  to  suit  him,  or  by  habit,  the  attraction  of 
old  associations,  and  a  thousand  other  possible  considera- 
tions. The  idea  that  a  man  will  always  move  where  he 
can  save  money  by  it,  presupposes,  as  all  merely  economic 
laws  do,  that  the  competition  between  the  two  matters 
in  question  is  purely  one  of  price.  But  that  is  not  gen- 
erally the  case.  Other  considerations  always  come  in 
and  make  more  or  less  friction  in  the  working  of  any 
economic  law,  just  as  they  do  in  any  physical  law, — so 
much  friction,  in  fact,  and  so  m.any  forces  not  counted 
upon,  that  sometimes  the  law  does  not  work  in  its 
expected  direction  at  all — or  that  the  result  may  even 
be  counter  to  the  direction  of  the  disturbing  force  under 
consideration,  instead  of  the  expected  direction. 

A  striking  recent  illustration  of  how  these  two 
opposing  tendencies  laid  our  leading  authorities  by  the 
ears  is  that  Professor  Seligman,  intent  on  the  tendency 
to  free  competition,  says  substantially,  with  the  old 
economists :  of  course  the  tenant  moves  unless  the  land- 
lord pays  the  tax:  so  the  tax  is  not  distributed,  and  any 
opinion  that  it  is,  is  "so  very  superficial  as  scarcely  to 
deserve  a  refutation".  Mr.  Wells,  on  the  contrary,  in- 
tent upon  the  friction  that  prevents  free  competition, 
says  that  the  tenant  will  pay  the  tax  for  the  sake  of 
staying,  and  that  in  fact  the  consumer  will  generally  pay 
the  tax  for  what  he  wants.  So  Professor  Seligman's 
expression  made  the  disciples  of  Mr.  Wells  feel  sad. 


§  473  S]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  5S9 

If  a  tyro  might  venture  an  opinion  where  doctors 
disagree,  both  are  right  and  both  are  wrong,  as  usual  in 
sucli  disagreements.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  sometimes 
real  estate  rents  only  for  the  current  interest  on  its 
selling  price  (or  less),  and  some  rents  for  that  interest 
and  taxes.  There  is  such  an  immense  variety  of  land, 
with  such  an  immense  variety  of  improvements,  that 
it  is  very  hard  to  tell  what  it  will  rent  for.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  if  a  man  hires  a  room  in  a  hotel,  he  need 
not  necessarily  pay  his  share  of  the  landlord's  taxes: 
the  landlord  may  make  profit  enough  on  other  items 
to  pay  the  taxes  himself.  It  will  depend  upon  what 
competition  he  has  to  stand,  and  can  stand. 

Nor  would  it  necessarily  be  easy  for  a  manufacturer, 
for  instance,  staying  in  his  old  place,  after  a  new  tax 
is  levied,  to  charge  the  tax  to  his  customers.  Some  of 
473  W.  Effects  on  his  competitors  would  be  apt  to  move  to 
producers.  gave  the  amount  of  the  tax,  and  so  be  able 

to  keep  their  prices  down;  and  this  would  force  those 
not  moving  to  keep  their  prices  down — in  other  words : 
to  pay  the  tax  themselves,  and  not  try  to  shift  it  on 
to  their  customers.  The  manufacturers  with  profitable 
monopolies,  or  those  able  enough  to  produce  low  and 
make  large  profits,  would  simply  have  their  profits 
diminished,  but  would  be  able  to  stand  it.  Those, 
whether  they  moved  or  not,  not  able  enough  to  make 
profits  in  excess  of  the  tax,  would  be  driven  out  of 
business. 

That  would  diminish  the  supply  of  goods,  and  so  of 
course  raise  prices  to  restore  the  equilibrium  of  de- 
mand and  supply  (14S  d,  148  ^).  This  advance  in  price 
would  of  course  save  some  producers  who  otherwise 
would  be  forced  out  of  business,  and  would  help  pay 
the  tax  for  all  producers;  and  as  the  advanced  price 
comes  out  of  the  community,  that  portion  of  the  tax: 
would  be  distributed  after  all. 

473  (g).  stimulate  People  might  work  a  little  harder,  or 
production.  invention  and  business  faculty  bestir  them- 

selves a  little  more,  to  create  new  productions  and 
cheapen  old  ones,  so  as  to  pay  the  tax.     Such  results, 


5 go  Taxation.  ^  [§  473  g 

especially  in  the  way  of  labor-saving  inventions,  have 
sometimes  followed  new  taxes.  So  far,  then,  as  the 
public  bestirred  themselves  to  pay  the  increased  prices 
for  the  productions  from  the  taxed  realty,  the  tax 
would  be  shifted;  and  the  tenant,  too,  could  deny  him- 
self and  improve  his  methods  for  the  sake  of  paying 
som_e  of  the  tax.  What  was  not  paid  by  these  means, 
the  landlord  would  have  to  pay. 

We  will  take  it  as  proved,  then,  that  in  the  general 
run  of  cases,  tho  a  realty-tax  cannot  be  entirely  dis- 
tributed, it  must  be  to  some  extent.  But  before  we 
pass  on,  let  us  summarize  by  what  agencies:  by  the 
friction  of  moving,  which  will  obstruct  the  producers 
saving  the  tax  by  getting  cheaper  quarters,  and  so 
lead  them  to  charge  it  to  their  customers  as  far  as 
they  can;  by  the  restriction  of  product  (and  conse- 
quent raising  of  prices)  which  will  arise  from  the  tax 
driving  out  of  business  men  not  able  enough  to  save 
the  tax  by  cheap  production;  and  by  stimulating  the 
efforts  and  ingenuity  of  all  concerned,  consumers  as 
well  as  producers,  to  increase  their  ability  in  order  to 
meet  the  tax. 

Now  can  realty  evade  its  taxes,  or,  whether  shifted 
or  not,  has  somebody  got  to  pay  them?  Real  es- 
tate is,  of  all  things,  the  most  certain  to  pay  its 
MZ(h).  Sure  to  taxes.  It  cannot,  like  most  personal  prop- 
be  paid,  crty,  be  hidden  when  the  assessor  comes 

around;  nor,  if  the  owner  does  not  pay,  can  realty, 
like  most  personal  property,  be  sent  out  of  reach  of 
the  collector  who  will  want  to  sell  it  and  collect  the  tax. 
473  (i).  and  easy  As  to  the  asscssor's  ability  to  value  the 
to  assess,  ^wo  kinds  of  property  justly :   many  kinds 

of  personal  property  are  of  extremely  uncertain  value, 
which  cannot  be  determined  even  by  the  owner 
himself.  On  the  other  hand,  realty  is  known  and 
observed  by  the  whole  community,  and  a  list  of  it  is 
easily  and  usually  kept  open  to  everybody's  criticism. 
In  New  York  City,  the  lists  are  now  printed,  and  ob- 
tainable by  anybody:   so,  other  things  even,  the  valua- 


§  474]  ',  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  591 

tion  put  on  a  piece  of  real  estate  cannot  often  be  very- 
far  from  what  people  in  general  would  consider  fair. 
Even  political  pulls,  which  often  wipe  out  a  man's 
personal  tax,  cannot  so  readily  affect  his  realty-tax. 

473  OM-  and  cheap-  The  realty-tax  is  much  the  cheapest 
est  to  collect.  of  all  taxes  to  collect.  A  large  part  of 
the  expense  of  collecting  other  taxes,  is  in  paying 
men  to  find  the  things  taxed,  and  to  decide  what  they 
are  worth. 

MZ(k),  All  owners  ^^  ^^  worth  while  to  reflect  that  if  the 
must  always  pay  rcalty-tax  could  entirely  distribute  itself, 
part  of  It.  real-estate   owners   could   not   even   then 

make  other  people  pay  it  all.  If  each  owner  of 
realty  could  charge  all  its  taxes  to  his  tenants  or 
customers,  he  would  himself  have  to  pay  the  charges 
of  other  real-estate  owners  in  everything  he  bought, 
except  his  sea-food;  and  even  in  that,  he  would  have 
to  pay  his  share  of  the  taxes  on  his  fishmonger's  shop. 
473^/;.  Summary  ^^  ^um  up  the  comparisou  of  a  realty- 
for  and  against  tax  witli  the  Other  taxcs  wc  have  been 
the  real-estate  tax.  considering:  it  docs  not  involve  double 
taxation,  as  do  taxes  on  stocks,  bonds,  mortgages  and 
other  obligations;  it  does  not  tempt  to  concealment 
or  evasion,  as  do  duties,  excises,  income-tax,  inherit- 
ance-tax and  personal-property  tax — all  the  vampire 
and  inquisition  taxes;  it  does  not  put  the  principal 
burden  on  the  poor,  as  do  the  vampire-taxes,  or  put 
it  on  the  honest,  as  do  the  inquisition-taxes;  the 
property  to  be  taxed  can  be  more  fairly  valued  than 
most  other  kinds,  and  cannot  be  hidden  or  wasted 
like  most  other  kinds;  the  tax  is  sure  to  be  collected, 
despite  any  amount  of  bankruptcy  and  dishonesty ;  the 
tax  does  not,  like  duties,  excises  and  income-tax,  dis- 
courage production;  but  it  does  discourage  saving,  at 

474  Real  estate  ^^^^t  in  badly-govemed  countries  where 
under  poor  gov-  the  taxation  is  ruthlessly  oppressive, 
ernment.  There,  a  man  would  at  least  put  his  sav- 
ings into  property  that  he  could  hide  from  the  tax- 
gatherer,  rather  than  in  the  kind  of  property  that  is 
hardest  to  hide.     Even  if  that  did  not  discourage  saving 


59^  Taxation.  [§  474 

in  sucli  countries:  as  the  savings  are  not  put  in  real 
estate,  the  demand  for  real  estate  is  so  small  that  its 
value  is  low,  and  taxation  is  less  fruitful  in  consequence. 
The  government  of  many  American  cities — notoriously 
New  York — has  at  times  been  so  bad  that  many  wise 
men  hesitated  to  buy  real  estate  there. 

Even  the  real-estate  tax,  then,  has  not  the  merits 
of  the  indirect  taxes.  But  indirect  taxes  have  not  the 
merits  of  the  real-estate  tax.  The  merits  of  the  indirect 
taxes  are  only  the  merits  of  being  adapted  to  very  short- 
sighted people,  tho  perhaps  most  people  are  short- 
sighted. A  way  to  combine  at  least  some  of  the  ease 
of  payment  of  indirect  taxes,  with  the  certainty  and 
reasonableness  of  real-estate  taxes,  is  to  make  the 
latter  group  payable  if  the  payer  prefers,  in  small  in- 
stalments. Something  in  that  direction  is  done  in  some 
places  already. 

Our  history  contains  a  striking  testimonial  to  the 
certainty  and  fairness  of  taking  realty  as  the  basis 
of  taxation.  In  the  original  Articles  of  Confederation  of 
475.  Opinion  of  the  States,  it  was  provided  (and  to  return 
the  Fathers.  ^q  ^he  provision  would   probably  be  the 

greatest  improvement  that  could  be  made  in  our  policy 
to-day)  that  each  state  should  contribute  to  the  National 
treasury  in  proportion  to  the  value  of  the  land  "granted 
to  or  surveyed  for  any  person  .  .  .  and  the  buildings  and 
improvements  thereon".  Whether  the  tax  was  to  be 
actually  raised  from  the  land,  was  left  to  each  state  to 
determine:  the  Articles  of  Confederation  only  ordered 
it  apportioned  among  the  states  according  to  the  land 
and  improvements.  And  that  is  what  taxing  real 
estate  would  substantially  amount  to  at  almost  any 
time  and  place :  the  amount  of  realty  a  man  might  own 
would  simply  be  an  index  to  what  taxes  he  should  pay — 
an  index  of  his  ability  to  pay  taxes,  which  modern  writers 
all  say  should  be  the  basis  of  taxation.  But  this 
index  would  of  course  not  be  perfect,  neither  is  any 
other  that  assessors  can  get  at:  what  they  fondly  assume 
to  be  his  income,  probably  least  of  all.     With  realty  as 


§  47^]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  593 

an  index,  the  owner  would  not  necessarily  pay  from 
the  income  of  realty,  but  from  whatever  income  he 
might  have.  He  might  be  occupying  the  realty  himself, 
or  it  might  be  lying  idle.  Altho  the  provision  for 
apportionment  according  to  land  values  was  not  re- 
enacted  in  the  Constitution,  that  fact  does  not  necessarily 
show  that  the  constitution-framers  differed  from  their 
predecessors:  for  during  the  Revolutionary  War,  taxes 
were  gathered  largely  from  duties  and  excises:  there- 
fore, in  the  Constitution,  such  taxes  seem  to  have  been 
taken  for  granted  as  a  matter  of  habit. 

„.   ^     ,,   ^,  One    difficulty    already    experienced   in 

476,  Equalization,     ,  •  .     .       .  xi  i^         r   j.i 

levying  a  state  tax  on  the  realty  of  the 

counties  separately,  would  have  to  be  overcome  in 
levying  a  United  States  tax  on  the  realty  of  the  several 
states — the  very  troublesome  difficulty  of  "equaliza- 
tion"— that  is:  making  each  locality  bear  its  just  pro- 
portion of  the  general  burden  of  the  state.  No  such 
difficulty  arises  regarding  local  burdens :  for  the  money 
is  spent  where  it  is  raised.  But  when  a  whole  state 
is  taxed  to  pay  for  a  state-house  at  the  capital,  state 
prison,  asylums,  legislature,  executive,  judiciary,  etc., 
if  one  locality  pays,  say,  one  per  cent,  of  its  property, 
it  is  not  fair  that  another  locality  should  pay  two 
per  cent.  This  difficulty  arises  because  the  appraisers 
are  nearly  everywhere  local  officers,  and  those  of  each 
locality  try  to  appraise  low,  so  that  their  locality  will 
be  sure  not  to  pay  more  than  its  share  of  state  and 
county  burdens.  This  is  generally  the  reason  why 
real  estate  is  appraised  at  but  a  third  or  a  half  of  its 
market  value ;  perhaps  too,  it  explains  much  indifference 
in  "getting  at"  personal  estate.  Till  lately,  the  chief 
remedy  in  use  was  to  have  for  each  county  a  "board 
of  equalization",  made  up  of  officers  from  various 
sections;  but  this  is  cumbrous  and  not  very  effective. 
There  are  quite  generally  laws  that  everything  shall  be 
appraised  at  its  full  value,  but  they  are  not  usually 
effective  either.  And  to  have  state  assessors  for 
state  purposes,  county  assessors  for  county  purposes. 


594  Taxation.  [§476 

and  local  assessors  for  local  purposes — to  do  the  work 
three  tnnes,  would  be  very  cumbrous  and  expensive. 
476  c«;.  Remedies  Other  remedies  proposed  are  to  have 
proposed.  different   objects  taxed  by   the   different 

governments.  In  New  York  there  is  quite  a  general 
sentiment  for  reserving  the  general  property-tax  (mean- 
ing real  estate  and  personal  property)  especially  for 
local  use ;  franchises,  depending  on  their  nature,  for  both 
local  and  state;  the  inquisitorial  taxes  (except  that  on 
personal  property) — income,  succession,  etc.,  for  the 
state,  and  it  has  lately  been  decreed  in  some  places,  to 
reserve  taxation  on  mortgages  for  the  state.  Excise 
and  duties  are  already  virtually  for  the  nation.  At  pres- 
ent, the  thing  tends  to  work  itself  out  as  indicated,  but 
making  the  personal -property  tax  local,  and  reserving 
the  other  bad  taxes  for  the  state  and  nation,  does  not 
make  any  of  them  good  taxes,  or  promote  broad 
patriotism. 

I  said  "at  present"  because  many  people  think  there 
is  a  growing  tendency  in  people's  minds,  as  there  cer- 
tainly is  in  natural  law,  for  all  inquisition  and  vam- 
pire taxes  to  disappear  (468  e).  But  if  they  ever  do, 
it  will  be  a  long  time  hence,  and  would  involve  amend- 
ments to  the  constitutions  of  most  of  the  states,  and 
(for  national  taxes)  of  the  United  States  (466  o) :  those 
constitutions  require  taxation  of  all  "property".  But 
if  the  bad  taxes  disappear,  the  equalization  difficulty 
would  settle  itself:  assessment  for  all  the  governments 
cotild  be  done  by  the  national  officials,  who  could  be 
appointed  by  the  central  authority,  instead  of  depend- 
ing on  votes,  and  so  being  subject  to  local  bias. 

A  simpler  way  of  equalization,  and  a  very  promising 
one,  was  lately  enacted  in  Connecticut.  It  makes  each 
locality  responsible  for  state  taxes  in  proportion  to  the 
amount  raised  for  local  taxes.  This  not  only  removes 
the  temptations  to  wrong  assessments,  but  also  pro- 
motes local  economy. 

One  consequence  of  assessors  not  wanting  to  alienate 
the  voters,  is  that  they  generally  assess  the  property 
of  non-rssidents  too  high.     This  is  guarded  against  in 


§  47^  a]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  595 

England  by  permitting  a  man  to  vote  in  all  places  where 
he  owns  property.  There  are  many  other  reasons  for 
this — more,  apparently,  than  against  it. 

II.  Varieties  of  Realty-Taxes. 

So  far,  we  have  discussed  merely  the  general  topic 
of  taxing  real  estate.  But  there  are  several  ways  of 
doing  it.  The  principal  ones  that  our  people  now 
have  under  consideration,  we  may  say  amount  to  four. 
First  is  the  general  present  method  of 
sfngieTax*""*^'*'  taxing  all  the  realty— land  and  improve- 
Separated  Tax,       ments,  without  regard  to  whether  other 

Appropnation-tax.  '  .  -,    ^  .         hai  • 

thmgs    are    taxed   or   not.     This    we    can 

properly  call  rcalty-ta,:s..  Then  there  is  a  second  propo- 
sition, supplementary  to  the  first,  that  there  shall  be 
only  one  single  tax  levied,  and  that  that  shall  be  on 
realty  (including,  if  we  please,  the  land  devoted  to  the 
operation  of  franchises).  This  is  the  proper  "single 
tax",  and  we  would  better  reserve  the  name  for  it. 
Then,  third,  is  the  proposition  that  the  land  shall  be 
taxed  separately  from  the  improvements;  this  and 
each  of  several  others  have  been  called  single  tax:  so 
to  distinguish,  perhaps  we  would  better  call  this  the 
separated  tax.  Then  the  fourth  proposition,  which 
may  be  applied  to  any  one  of  the  preceding  three,  is 
to  tax  all  the  value  of  the  realty  away — virtually  to 
appropriate  all  the  land  for  public  use.  This  also  has 
been  called  single  tax,  but  as  that  term  has  lost  mean- 
ing by  being  applied  to  so  many  things,  we  may  as 
well  call  this  one  appropriation-ta.-s.. 

As  we  have  considered  the  first — the  realty-tax  in 
general,  let  us  go  on  to  consider  the  three  proposed 
modifications  of  it. 

Henry  George  was  by  no  means  the  first  to  adi^ocate 
that  it  should  be  a  single  tax.     As  early  as  the  close 
of  the   seventeenth   century,  John  Locke 
Taf^ILlf'sfhlory.'  taught  that  all  taxes  ultimately  were  dis- 
tributed, and  gravitated  to  the  land,  and 


^96  Taxation.  [§478a 

might  as  well  be  put  -there  in  one  single  tax,  as  by  a 
troublesome  and  expensive  indirection.  Nearly  a  hun- 
dred years  later,  his  ideas  were  taken  up  by  the  physio- 
crats, and  they  have  had  many,  advocates  since. 

Of  anv  attempted  tax  on  commodities,  Locke  said: 
"The  merchant  will  not  bear  it,  the  laborer  cannot, 
and  therefore  the  landlord  must."  The  fallacies  in 
this  reasoning,  as  regards  the  merchant,  are  that  the 
merchant  often  will  bear  it,  at  least  in  part,  as  a  matter 
of  competition,  and  also  when  an  even  price  is  usual 
and  important,  and  when  the  tax  is  too  small  to  justify 
going  to  a  higher  price  (464).  As  regards  the  laborer: 
by  the  laborer,  Locke  apparently  meant  the  producer, 
as  distinct  from  the  exchanger  (whom  he  called  the 
merchant).  Now  the  producer  includes  not  only  the 
laborer,  but  the  enterpriser  and  the  capitalist:  these 
later  people  certainly  can  bear  the  tax;  and  even  the 
laborer  (at  least  in  our  day,  if  not  in  Locke's)  certainly 
can  bear  some  of  it,  and  does  in  excises,  tariffs,  and  rent. 
Locke's  opinion  remained  undisputed, 
A7B(b).  waipoie-s.  y^^^^^^^^  ^^til  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  about 

1733,  wanted  to  increase  customs  duties.  Then  he  took 
ground  just  the  opposite  of  Locke's:  among  his  argu- 
ments was  that  the  duties  were  no  harder  on  people 
in  general  than  a  land-tax,  because  consumers  of  all 
commodities  have  to  pay  the  land-taxes.  The  reason- 
ing was  that,  as  everything  people  want  comes  from 
the  ground,  the  landlord  can  make  all  who  use  anything 
pay  his  taxes. 

This  reasoning  was  full  of  fallacies.  In  the  first  place, 
it  is  no  more  the  entire  truth  that  everj^hing  that 
people  want  comes  from  the  ground,  than  it  is  that 
everything  is  made  by  Labor  with  a  big  L.  Either 
statement  ignores  what  value  is  added  to  raw  material 
or  to  big-L-Labor  by  the  labor  (with  a  small  1)  of  a 
Vanderbilt,  or  an  Edison,  or  a  Michelangelo. 

But  after  we  recognize  the  enormous  increases  of  value 
effected  by  Ability  (or  labor  with  a  small  1,  if  you 
prefer),  Walpole  is  not  right,  even  then:  people  can 
decline  to  use  some  of  the  things  at  the  enhanced  price 


§478<^]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  597 

that  the  landowner's  taxes  would  impose:  so   he  will 
have  to  pay  at  least   that  portion  himself   until,  and 
unless,  it  finds  its  way  to  other  things. 
„,o/  >  n«:   ■  On  this  principle,  if  a  man  is  rich  and 

478  (c).  Diffusion  , .  J^  -X-  r  \      ^  i  •  i 

on  different  grades  wants  to  live  ou  1^  itth  Avcnuc,  and  IS  ready 
of  property.  ^^  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^  ^^  ^^  ^^^  ^^^  ^^  g^  anywhere 

else  to  save  taxes.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a  man  is 
poor  and  wants  a  farm,  he  may  be  forced  to  go  down 
a  grade  for  the  sake  of  saving  taxes. 

The  rule  in  regard  to  the  distribution  of  real-estate 
taxes,  seems,  then,  to  be  that  fancy  property,  for  which 
people  are  ready  to  pay  fancy  prices,  probably  can 
shift  its  taxes  much  more  readily  among  such  people, 
than  can  other  property  among  people  who  seek  it 
largely  with  an  eye  to  economy — except  of  course  such 
people  as  have  already  touched  bottom — and  cannot 
find  any  property  poorer  than  they  have. 

We  saw  something  like  this  before  (464) — that  a  tax 
can  be  shifted  most  readily  upon  those  who  will  have, 
and  those  who  must  have.  So  the  realty-tax,  while 
desirable  on  the  whole,  is  probably  harder  on  average 
property,  than  on  the  best  and  the  worst.  And  there 
is  no  doubt  that  under  the  single  tax,  agricultural  land 
would,  on  the  whole,  be  at  a  disadvantage  as  compared 
with  city  land:  for  city  land  has  the  monopoly  value 
of  a  spot  favored  by  situation  and  connections,  while 
agricultural  land,  except  for  the  local  truck-garden, 
poultry  and  dairy  business,  is  more  nearly  in  competition 
with  all  the  land  in  the  world. 

It  is  important  to  note,  however,  that  the  worst 
property  in  cities  is  not  generally  owned  by  the  poor. 
The  rich  generally  own  large  quantities  of  it,  and  rent  it 
to  the  poor  at  higher  rates,  in  proportion  to  its  value, 
than  they  can  get  for  better  property:  that  fact  of  course 
adds  force  to  the  theory  that  its  taxes  are  shifted.  On 
the  other  hand,  in  a  country  township,  probably  the 
taxes  on  the  farms  and  ordinary  houses  could  not 
distribute  themselves,  while  if  it  happened  to  be  a 
favorable  region  for  hotels  and  summer-villas,  probably 
the  taxes  on  them  coiild  distribute  themselves,  at  least 


598  Taxation.  [§  47SC 

so  far  as  to  the  tenant-s.  Nevertheless  in  such  a  neigh- 
borhood, the  majority  of  voters  would  probably  be 
short-sighted  enough  to  oppose  the  single  tax  on  real 
estate,  and  try  to  tax  also  the  stocks,  bonds  and  mort- 
gages held  by  such  of  the  villa  residents  as  voted  there. 
In  short,  the  position  would  be  just  the  reverse  of  the 
city.  The  single  tax  would  7iot  be  so  desirable  on  the 
whole,  and  yet  its  absence  would  be  harder  on  the 
holders  of  the  superior  property — even  tho  that  is  the 
very  property  that  would  have  most  of  the  tax  to  pay, 
if  it  were  enacted. 

478  (d).  Local  op-  Because  of  these  differences  and  para- 
tion  in  taxation,  doxcs,  it  has  been  wiscly  proposed  to  let 
each  local  government — village,  township  or  city,  settle 
its  own  method  of  taxation — to  have  "local  option"  in 
taxation. 

I  This  certainly  would  be  v;iser  than  having  each 
legislature  pass  uniform  laws  for  the  entire  state,  even 
if  they  would  do  so  in  accord  with  the  ideas  of  the  most 
intelligent  people.  But  at  best,  taking  the  "ideas  of 
the  most  intelUgent  people"  is  something  that  legisla- 
tures are  nearly  certain  not  to  do ;  and  the  question  is 
too  new  for  the  most  intelligent  people  to  be  sure  that 
any  one  scheme  would  work  well  in  all  places.  Some 
great  cities,  and  perhaps  some  great  states,  have,  it 
is  true,  virtually  been  brought  under  the  single  tax  by 
the  pure  operation  of  natural  laws  (472  e,  472  /),  but 
it  is  too  early,  without  farther  experiment,  to  say 
what  is  best  at  this  stage  of  evolution,  for  the  rural 
regions  generally. 

The  fact  is  that  Nature  and  human  nature  determine 
a  great  many  questions  before  legislatures  get  their 
eyes  open  to  them,  and  often  contrary  to  what  legis- 
latures are  able  to  see.  Local  option  in  taxation,  for 
instance,  is  already  in  quite  frequent  operation,  while 
very  few  people  realize  that  it  is,  and  while  the  letter 
of  the  law  is  against  it.  Despite  the  laws  taxing  per- 
sonal property,  in  practice  New  York  City  exempts  at 
leact  four  fifths  of  its  personal  property.     And  in  cities 


§  47^  c]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  599 

.c^enerally,  a  much  smaller  proportion  of  personal  prop- 
erty is  taxed  than  in  the  country — sometimes  less  than 
two  per  cent.  In  the  township  of  Fulton  lately,  two  asses- 
sors levied  outside  of  the  village,  and  one  in  the  village. 
Those  outside  listed  all  the  pianos,  guns  and  even  fish- 
poles;  while  the  one  in  the  village  did  not  (oificially) 
find  a  gun  or  a  piano  there.  When  it  comes,  as  it  cer- 
tainly will,  to  legalizing  such  local  option,  the  best 
opinion  is  not  in  favor  of  permitting  localities  directly 
to  create  their  own  systems  of  taxation:  for  generally 
they  would  do  it  worse  than  even  the  legislatures.  But 
it  seems  wise  to  enable  them  to  give  the  sanction  of 
law,  with  its  regularity  and  consistency,  to  the  exemp- 
tions which  they  already  know  all  about,  and  practice 
with  unjust  irregularity. 

478  re;.  Effect  of  ^^  ^^  important  to  try  to  determine  what 
single  tax  suddenly  would  be  the  cffcct  ou  landowners  of  sud- 
impose  ,  denly  stopping  all  other  taxes,  and  coming 

to  a  single  tax  on  real  estate.  As  a  realty -tax  can  only 
partially  distribute  itself,  at  first  sight  it  seems  as  if  all 
landlords  would  at  once  be  made  poorer  by  the  undis- 
tributed portion  of  the  tax.  At  second  sight,  so  far  as 
stocks  represent  shares  in  landed  property,  that  sort  of 
personal  property  would  have  to  pay  in  either  case :  be- 
cause the  profits  from  which  the  dividends  are  paid, 
would  be  lessened  by  the  amount  of  the  tax.  But 
other  forms  of  personal  property  would  not  have  to 
pay:  so  realty-owners  might  not  have  to  pay  materially 
more  than  they  now  pay  (472  c).  But  to  take  a  third 
sight,  the  realty-owners  really  pay  pretty  nearly  all 
now.  As  a  rule  (tho  there  are  many  exceptions),  people 
who  own  the  realty,  own  pretty  much  everything  else. 
As  nearly  as  we  can  tell,  nine  tenths  of  the  personal 
property  taxed,  is  owned  by  those  who  own  the  land: 
so  the  change  would  mainly  be  paying  to  Peter  what  is 
now  paid  to  Paul,  less  the  expense  of  employing  Paul 
to  collect  it.  And  Paul  costs  an  enormous  deal  that 
would  then  be  saved — not  only  the  whole  custom-house 
system,  and  most  of  the  tax-machinery — national,  state 


6oo  Taxation.  [§  478  <? 

and  local,  but  also  whatever  the  middleman's  profits 
may  be  (464),  and  the  waste  there  certainly  is,  on  all 
the  indirect  taxes. 

Taxation,  as  we  have  seen,  is  really  alread}^  restricted 
to  real  estate,  to  a  degree  that  very  few  people  begin 
to  dream.  Yet  some  people  reason  that  if  it  were  sud- 
denly nominally  restricted  to  real  estate,  there  would 
be  a  great  rush  to  sell  real  estate,  and  prices  would  have 
to  fall  fearfully  to  restore  the  equation  of  supply  and 
demand  (148  J).  It  certainly  has  not  worked  that  way 
where  real  estate  has  been  gradually  becoming  the  prin- 
cipal object  of  taxation,  as  it  has  in  nearly  all  advanced 
communities.  But  if  the  shifting  of  taxes  to  real  estate 
were  hastened  by  a  sudden  enactment,  there  might  be 
a  panic,  tho  as  real-estate  owners  are  of  the  most  intelli- 
gent and  instructed  classes,  they  probably  would  realize 
all  we  have  been  considering,  and,  if  some  forced  sales, 
others  would  be  glad  to  pick  up  the  bargains  and  sustain 
the  market. 

To  propose  the  single  tax,  then,  is  not  to  propose  a 
revolution,  but  merely  to  recognize  and  promote  an 
evolution  that  in  the  most  advanced  communities  is 
already  nearly  accomplished,  and  can  be  fully  accom- 
plished without  any  serious  disturbance. 


478 r/;.  Experi-  .The  single  tax  has  been  tried  in  Austral- 
*'"^^-  asia,  and  they  have  even  gone  as  far  as  the 

separated  tax:  and,  as  already  said  (472  e),  the  single 
tax  has  been  tried  approximately  in  New  York  and 
many  other  places.  As  alread}^  intimated,  the  people, 
in  many  of  our  cities  at  least,  like  it  as  far  as  they 
have  approximated  to  it,  and  the  Australasians  find  it 
very  satisfactory.  Yet  the  fact  that  it  seems  to  be 
liked  so  far  as  tried,  does  not  necessarily  prove  that 
it  would  be  liked  everywhere:  it  may  prove  only  that 
it  has  been  tried  where  conditions  are  favorable  to  it, 
and  that  where  it  has  not  been  tried,  conditions  are 
not  favorable.  In  spite  of  its  being  popular  in  the 
cities,  our  people  away  from  the  cities  do  not  even 
comprehend  it.     The  farmer  thinks   first  of  his  land, 


§  479]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  6oi 

and  not  of  his  cattle,  crops,  machinery,  and  tools;  and 
lie  thinks,  often  wrongly,  that  if  all  taxes  were  col- 
lected from  the  land,  his  share  would  be  increased. 
The  way  of  reconciling  these  different  opinions  is  by 
local  option. 

It  is  not  universally  proposed  in  our  day  by  the  advo- 
cates of  the  single  tax,  that  the  tax  should  cover  all 
the  real  estate.     Some  favor  what  we  have  agreed  to 

A-,n  c  i  At.  call  the  "separated"  tax,  on  the  land 
479.  Separated  tax      ,  .       ^^  .  '  ,       , 

on  land  exclusive  alone,  and  not  on  improvements,  because 
of  improvements,  taxing  improvements  discourages  people 
from  making  them — from  building,  draining,  etc.  It  is 
for  the  interest  of  the  whole  community  that  all  rea- 
sonable improvements  should  be  made,  and  yet  a  man 
must  risk  getting  from  a  quarter  to  a  third  more 
gross  income  out  of  a  building,  if  it  is  taxed,  than  if 
it  is  not. 

New  York  City  has  taken  the  first  step  toward  the 
separated  tax  by  appraising  (tho  not  yet  taxing)  land 
and  improvements  separately. 

Under  a  s^^stem  drawing  all  the  taxes  from  the  land, 
in  many  cases  the  separated  tax  would  be  more  than  a 
mere  suggestive  stimulus  to  improvement:  for  in  some 
cases  it  would  almost  force  people  to  put  up  more  build- 
ings, so  as  to  get  revenue  from  the  buildings  to  pay  the  in- 
creased taxes  on  the  land.  But  sometime  back  (470  a) 
it  was  said  that  that  was  a  stupid  scheme,  because  the 
money  would  have  to  come  from  other  investments 
proved  better  by  the  fact  of  the  money  being  in  them. 
This  fact  prevents  unimproved  real  estate  being  the 
best  possible  object  of  taxation:  for  it  could  not  always 
find  capital  for  improvements.  In  other  words,  some 
unimproved  real  estate  is  useless,  and  should  not  be 
taxed.  It  is  one  thing  to  encourage  possible  improve- 
ment, but  another  to  demand  more  improvement  than 
could  pay,  and  punish  the  landlord  for  not  making  it. 
Unimproved  land,  even  when  worth  improving,  is  not  as 
'  apt  to  rent  for  interest  and  taxes,  as  improved  land, 
because  taxes  on  buildings  are  more  apt  than  those  ©n 


6o2  Taxation.  [§  479  a 

,,„    ,  „  .,,.        the  laivi,  to  diffuse  themselves:   a  tenant 

479  ra;.  Buildings  -i        jz      i        i  i        J     l,     j.  ^ 

diffuse  taxes  more  can  easily  nnd  cheaper  land,  but  cannot 
^eac^/Vi/  than  land,  ^^^^y^  ^s  easily ,  find  a  cheaper  or  more 
suitable  building :  buildings  for  a  given  purpose  do  not 
vary  in  price  nearly  as  much  as  land,  and  the  build- 
ing generally  costs  much  more  than  the  land,  tho  not 
always  in  big  cities  or  on  favorable  corners. 

Roughly  speaking,  the  taxes  on  buildings  used  in 
production,  are  paid  by  the  consumer  of  the  goods 
produced,  because  manufacturers  cannot  compete  with 
each  other  very  much  in  expense  of  buildings,  and 
therefore  (roughly  speaking  alwa^^s)  must  charge  new 
building  taxes  to  their  customers,  or  get  along  with 
less  profit,  or  (if  they  cannot  do  that)  relinquish  business. 

Now  it  certainly  does  look  as  if  a  large  portion  of 
real-estate  taxes  must  be  diffused  to  tenants  and  their 
customers.  But  suppose  the  buildings  were  for  the  own- 
er's occupancy  only,  relieving  them  from  taxation  would 
479  C6J.  Neverthe-  give  Still  more  encouragement  to  build 
'encoutagefhn-"^  (P^y  rather,  Icss  discouragement)  than  now. 
prouement.  Personal  occupancy  under  the  separated 

tax,  is,  in  fact,  the  strongest  case  in  favor  of  building: 
because  if  the  building  were  taxed  and  used  unproduc- 
tively — as  a  home,  for  instance,  by  the  owner — he  could 
not  distribute  the  tax:  therefore  relieving  him  of  the 
tax  would  be  a  special  encouragement  to  build  a  home — 
a  very  desirable  thing  for  hosts  of  reasons.  The  capital 
for  increased  house-building  could  well  be  diverted  from 
less  desirable  investments;  and  so  far  as  it  might  be 
borrowed,  there  is  nothing  that  encourages  saving  among 
people  in  general,  like  the  desire  to  pay  such  a  debt, 
and  own  one's  home  free  from  it. 

Another  argument  for  the  separated  tax  is  that, 
as  the  land  is  made  already,  the  separated  tax  can- 
not discourage  making  it;  but  improvements  in  a 
sense  really  do  make  it — that  is,  they  add  to  the  value 
of  the  land  itself  as  distinct  from  the  improvements — - 
sometimes  almost  create  the  value.  So  to  exemipt  the 
improvements  from  taxation  would  help  to  add  value  to 
the  land. 


§  480]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  603 

But  it  is  a  question,  already  touched  on,  whether, 
if  the  tax  were,  taken  off  from  buildings,  those  who 
own  land  alone  without  improvements,  could  stand 
adding  the  tax  to  the  land.  This  is  a  different  ques- 
tion from  that  of  taking  all  taxes  off  personalty  and 
putting  them  on  realty.  In  communities  where  land 
can  be  had  for  the  asking,  taxes  taken  off  buildings  and 
distributed  over  all  the  land  would  have  to  be  paid  dis- 
proportionately by  the  poor:  for  in  such  communities, 
much  of  the  wealth  is  in  buildings,  and  to  exempt  them 
would  increase  the  taxes  on  unused  land.  On  the  other 
hand,  if,  instead  of  taking  off  taxes  from  buildings  and 
improvements,  they  were  taken  off  personalty,  the 
owners  of  unused  land  could  devote  the  saving  to  its 
taxes  or  improvement. 

480,  Appropria-  Now  we  come  to  the  appropriation-tax. 

tion-tax.  ^s  to  its  morality:    so  far  as  the  tax  can- 

not be  diffused,  it  must  rob  all  present  holders  of  their 
land.  That  was  considered  when  we  discussed  property 
rights  (66-75). 

Considering  that  question  settled,  then,  if  such  a  tax 
produced  more  money  than  government  needed,  it 
would  be  regrettable,  as  it  would  encourage  wasteful 
legislation.  That  could  not  be  cured  by  lowering  the 
rate,  without  the  tax  ceasing  to  be  an  appropriation-tax. 

But  if  tax  of  the  entire  rental  value  docs  produce  an 
excess,  it  is  proposed  by  the  advocates  of  the  tax  to 
devote  the  surplus  to  public  works,  and  give  it  to  the 
poor.  When  we  discussed  government's  promotion 
of  convenience,  we  seemed  to  see  good  reason  to  believe 
that  if  superfluous  money  were  devoted  to  public  works, 
it  would  be  mainly  wasted;  and  to  give  it  to  the  poor, 
would,  as  history  proves,  simply  increase  the  number 
of  the  poor  (47):  receiving  money  that  is  not  earned, 
makes  people  slow  to  earn  any.  The  state  takes  care 
of  the  incapable  already.  To  take  care  of  the  ca- 
pable would  tend  to  make  them  incapable.  But  aside 
from  all  this,  while  the  state  has  a  right  to  take  money 
for    its    general    purposes — which    benefit    those    from 


6o4  Taxation.  [§  480 

whom  it  takes  the  money,  as  well  as  the  rest  of  the 
community — to  take  money  from  one  man  to  give  it 
to  another  who  can  support  himself  if  he  must,  is  robbery. 

As  to  taxing  what  is  called  the  unearned  increment 
of  land,  we  considered  that  too  when  we  were  discussing' 
the  general  question  of  rights  of  private  property  in 
land  (74,  74  a). 

The  appropriation-tax,  then,  seems  to  merit  no  far- 
ther discussion. 

III.  Rental-Value  Tax. 

Some  time  back  (475),  we  spoke  of  the  Articles  of 
Confederation  making  real  estate,  irrespective  of  its 
own  immediate  product,  a  guide  or  index  to  the  amount 

^„.  o  ^  ,  ,  of  taxes  that  should  be  paid.  There  is 
481.  Rental-value        ,  ^,  , .  .^       ,  .   ,      .,    , 

Tax  is  on  con-  also  another  connection  m  which  it  has 
sumption.  gQ  served — as  a  guide  in  taxing  consump- 

tion, through  a  tax  on  the  rental  value  of  the  tax- 
payer's dwelling,  the  tax  to  be  paid  by  the  occupant, 
whether  he  owns  the  dwelling  or  rents  it.  This  tax 
has  been  approved  because  a  man's  dwelling  is,  despite 
many  exceptions,  a  very  fair  guide  to  his  rate  of  ex- 
penditure, as  well  as  to  his  taxable  ability.  Such  a  tax 
on  what  a  man  consumes,  encourages  saving,  as  already 
said.  Moreover,  his  rental  valuation  can  be  fairly  fixed, 
and  cannot  be  concealed  or  effectively  lied  about :  there- 
fore the  tax  offers  no  premium  on  dishonesty,  as  do  all 
the  other  taxes  on  consumption  that  we  have  considered. 
481  ra;.  Not  a  real-  The  rcutal-value  tax  is  not  really  a  real- 
estate  tax.  estate  tax.  If  a  man  paid  the  usual  realty- 
tax  on  a  house  and  lot,  and  rented  it  for  a  residence  to 
another  man  who  paid  the  rental-value  tax  we  have 
been  talking  about,  the  government  could  not  be  con- 
sidered as  collecting  twice  on  the  property:  for  the 
tenant's  rental-value  tax  is  not  put  on  the  property, 
as  the  property  cannot  be  sold  to  collect  it.  The  rental- 
value  tax  is  really  a  personal  tax,  the  amount  of  which 
is  determined  by  the  payer's  rental,  and  is  really 
intended  to  tax  his  general  expenditure.     Yet  a  New 


§48ic]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  605 

York  commission  in  1907  reported  in  favor  of  making  it 
a  lien  on  the  property! 

If  the  owner  himself  lives  on  the  property,  then  the 
property  can  be  sold  to  pay  his  rental-value  tax,  but  only 
as  any  other  property — even  personal  property — could 
be  sold  to  pay  any  tax  levied  on  him.  There  is  no 
reason  why  the  particular  piece  he  hves  on,  rather  than 
any  other  piece  he  may  own,  should  be  sold  to  pay  his 
rental-value  tax  or  any  other  personal  tax:  therefore 
48U6;.  Not  double  the  rental-value  tax  is  not  a  duphcate  tax 
taxation.  q^  the  dwelling,  any  more  than  any  part 

of  a  man's  property  is  a  double  tax  on  the  rest:  all 
his  property  is  subject  to  sale  for  any  one  of  his  taxes, 
if  the  part  on  which  that  one  is  levied  does  not  yield  it. 

It  has  been  objected  that,  for  instance,  a  rich  bachelor 
living  in  a  hall  bedroom  should  be  taxed  in  something 
more  than  rental  value  of  his  dwelling.  His  real  estate 
will  be  taxed,  of  course,  but  beyond  that,  it  is  clear 
that  attempting  to  get  at  exceptional  and  abnormal 
cases  does  not  pay  for  the  trouble.  A  rich  man  living 
meanly  would  be  almost  sure  to  conceal  all  of  his  wealth 
that  he  could,  and  not  unlikely  to  lie  about  it. 

But  suppose  a  man  lives  in  two  houses  at  different 
seasons,  as  so  many  people  do  now,  or  even  three  or 
four:  it  is  a  question  whether  his  rental-value  tax  should 
be  gauged  by  the  one  where  he  votes  from,  or  whether 
he  should  pay  a  rental-value  tax  on  all.  Of  course  he 
would  be  apt  to  vote  from  the  cheapest,  and  a  man 
ought  to  be  willing  to  pay  for  his  luxuries.  But  a  family 
does  not  use  materially  more  in  the  way  of  clothes,  food 
^ow  ,  c^    ,-vA     and  drink,  jewelrv,  or  hosts  of  other  things, 

481  (c).  Should  be  .     '  ■>  -  '      j.  -  ,  9 

on  one  residence  for  havmg  three  or  tour  houses,  than  tor 
""'^^  having  one;     and   not   only   are   country 

houses  good  things  for  keeping  great  producers  up  to 
the  best  working  condition,  but  it  is  a  good  thing 
for  country  regions  that  people  who  make  money  in 
the  cities,  should  spend  some  of  it  in  the  country.  City 
people  owning  country  houses  should  pay  for  the  lux- 
ury, but  not  pay  unduly,  so  as  to.  discourage  a  practice 
so  much  for  the  general  good. 


6o6  Taxation.  [§48i(i 

It  is  an  interesting  a-nd  instructive  question  whether 
the  rental-value  tax  would  be  shifted.  A  man  looking 
"  for  a  house  would  certainly  be  apt  to  say  to  a  landlord: 
"If  I  live  in  this  house,  I  must  pay  such  and  such  a 
rental-tax.  I  won't  take  it  unless  you  deduct  that." 
Then  the  landlord  might  say:  "I  must 
'"^'  wait  for  another  customer."  In  fact,  it 
would  be  a  case  of  demand  and  supply;  if  houses  were 
plenty  and  tenants  scarce,  it  would  go  one  way;  if 
tenants  were  plenty  and  houses  scarce,  it  would  go  the 
other  way.  The  tenant  has  to  pay  the  tax,  and  the 
question  of  his  getting  a  house  high  or  low  is  an  outside 
question,  just  as  it  is  outside  of  whatever  gas-bill  or  coal- 
bill  may  be  involved  in  running  the  same  house.  The 
authorities  seem  at  last  agreed  on  this:  there  has  been 
a  good  deal  of  fog  over  it,  but  it  is  pretty  well  cleared  up 
now. 

The  rental-value  tax  seems  to  have  all  the  merits  we 
have  sought  for  in  a  tax,  and  none  of  the  defects  we 
have  found.  It  is  also  a  good  one  in  practice :  wherever 
tried  (probably  longest  and  widest  in  England)  it  has  done 
very  well. 

IV.  Franchise -Tax. 

.0,1,     .,„  ,  Now  we  have  left  to  the  last,  the  con- 

482., Has  the  char-      ■  ,        ^.  r  ,  r      i   •      1        r   ^ 

actenstics  of  a  sideration  of  one  class  oi  objects  of  tax- 
rea -estate  ax.  ation — franchises,  which  we  briefly  com- 
mended many  pages  back:  we  saw  (159  b,  159  c)  that 
they  are  peculiarly  just  objects  of  taxation,  because 
they  are  usually,  in  their  very  nature,  really  public 
property;  and  in  getting  all  they  yield  beyond  a  rea- 
sonable profit  to  their  promoters,  the  public  is  usually 
but  getting  its  own. 

Our  general  study  has  shown  us  still  more  reasons 
why  franchises  are  good  objects  of  taxation:  they  can- 
not be  hidden  or  lied  about  as  successfully  as  most 
personal  property,  or  as  incomes  and  inheritances:  for 
there  are  so  few  of  them  that  it  would  cost  govern- 
ment very  little  thoroughly  to  investigate  their  ac- 
counts.    True,  the  managers  of  franchises  spend  a  great 


§  482]  Obvious  Direct  Taxes.  607 

deal  in  corrupting  public  officers,  but  probably  no 
amount  of  taxation  could  make  them  spend  much  more 
in  that  wa}'  than  they  do  now. 

The  verdict  of  experience  regarding  taxing  them  is 
that  it  is  done  in  most  countries  where  universal  suf- 
frage does  not  provide  legislatures  that  the  corporations 
can  buy;  and  it  is  found  to  be  in  all  respects  a  good 
tax.     The    tendency    to    use   it    is    increasing   rapidly. 

A  franchise-tax  is  a  real-estate  tax  after  all.  and  has 
all  the  merits  of  one.  The  New  York  legislature  so 
decreed  in  1S9Q,  and  it  is  plainly  so  if  we  take  into 
consideration  the  special  value  of  the  real  estate  for 
the  purpose  of  the  franchise.  But  of  course  it  would 
not  do  to  tax  a  railroad's  long  line  as  if  it  were  to  be 
used  for  farming:  or  the  long  strip  occupied  by  a  gas- 
pipe,  as  if  it  were  to  be  used  to  build  a  house  on:  each 
gets  its  value,  just  as  other  real  estate  does,  from  the 
size,  shape  and  location  that  fit  it  for  its  purpose: 
it  would  not  do  to  tax  a  Wall  Street  corner  according 
to 'its  value  for  residence  purposes,  or  a  Fifth  Avenue 
lot  according  to  its  value  for  stockbrokers'  offices,  or 
either  for  its  value  for  farming;  any  more  than  it 
would  do  to  tax  a  farm  for  its  value  for  building  jewelry- 
stores. 

In  fact,  then,  the  chief  value  of  a  franchise  consists 
in  its  ownership  of  its  peculiar  real  estate,  or  of  peculiar 
privileges  connected  with  peculiar  real  estate. 

No  matter  what  the  shape  of  the  real  estate  used, 
may  be,  it  is  generally  more  valuable  jor  its  purposes, 
than  all  the  rest  of  the  corporation's  property.  As 
Mr.  Shearman  points  out,  as  soon  as  a  street  railroad 
gets  its  franchise,  it  generally  bonds  it  for  many  times 
what  its  rails  and  rolling-stock  cost.  So  it  is  with  gas- 
lines  and  water-lines  and  franchises  generally. 


CHAPTER   XLII. 

DOUBLE     TAXATION. 

483.  Taxation  of         Suppose    a    real-estate    owner    gives    a 
mortgages.  mortgage.     Should    government    tax    the 

mortgage  in  the  hands  of  the  man  who  holds  it  ? 

Plainly  not,  if  government  continues  to 
i^^e'btriotVS.  ■tax  the  land  its  full  amount :  the  mortgage 
created  no  new  value,  and  for  this  reason, 
New  Jersey,  Idaho  and  probably  some  other  states 
exempt  mortgages  altogether,  and  New  York  has  just 
passed  a  law  imposing  on  them  only  a  small  recording 
tax.  If  the  government  taxes  the  mortgage,  and  taxes 
the  land  as  much  as  before,  it  taxes  on  more  value 
than  before,  without  there  being  any  new  value  to 
pay  the  tax;  in  other  words,  it  would  be  taxing  some 
of  the  old  value  twice,  which,  in  several  states,  is  uncon- 
stitutional. 

At  first  glance  it  appears  that  the  land  is  not  worth 
to  its  owner  as  much  as  before,  but  it  really  is,  unless 
and  until  it  is  foreclosed:  he  still  retains  the  use  and 
income  of  it,  and  therefore  is  in  as  good  condition, 
so  far  as  concerns  the  land,  to  pay  the  tax  as  he  was 
before  mortgaging. 

But  now  he  has  to  pay  the  interest  on  his  mortgage 
too.  But  also  the  mortgage  has  brought  him  the  money 
to  earn  that  interest,  and,  he  thinks,  a  profit  besides, 
or  he  would  not  have  made  the  mortgage. 

Then  he  should  pay  taxes  on  the  money  too,  if  the 
money  is  taxed:  he  alone  has  it  in  possession  and 
use  to  earn  the  taxes  with.     He  has  in  possession  and 

608 


§  483  ^]  Double  Taxation.  609 

use  all  tlie  real  estate  and  all  the  money,  and  of  course 
should  pa}^  all  the  taxes. 

483  eft;  and  value  ^^'^^  "'■'^^y  ^^^i^om  principle  of  sound  taxa- 
aione  should  be  tloH,  IS  that  the  taxcs  sliall  be  paid  by  the 
person  holding  the  property  which  produces 
the  wherewithal  to  pay  them.  That  is  really  ''taxing  at 
the  source  ". 

We  seem  to  have  made  out  tliat  the  mortgagor  has 
everything  concerned,  and  such  is  the  case.  The 
mortgagee  has  nothing  but  a  claim.  He  cannot  earn 
anything  to  pay  taxes  with  that.  He  has  parted 
with  his  money,  and  it  is  the  business  of  the  man  who 
has  that,  to  make  it  earn  its  taxes,  as  well  as  its 
interest. 

But  here  is  the  mortgagee  in  receipt  of  an  income. 
Should  not  he  pay  taxes  on  that?  The  question  de- 
pends upon  whether  the  source  of  the  income  has 
already  paid  its  taxes  (470  e).  We  have  just  seen  that 
it  ought  to,  as  everything  that  pays  taxes  ought  to, 
through  the  party  that  makes  it  earn  them — "at  the 
source". 

But  suppose  the  mortgagee  is  taxed,  as  he  very 
often  is,  who  should  pay  the  tax? 

It  is  perfectly  plain  that  nobody  should.  But  where 
somebody  is  made  to,  the  question  of  who,  is  gen- 
483  (c).  Mortgagor  ^^ally  made  as  broad  as  it  is  long,  because 
generally paystax  in  statcs  whcre  mortgagees  are  taxed,  the 
'"  "'^''"^'  mortgagor  generally  has  to  pay  the  mort- 

gagee a  rate  high  enough  to  cover  ordinary  interest  plus 
the  tax.  Mortgagors  have  to  pay  six  per  cent,  in  Ver- 
mont, where  mortgages  are  taxed,  while,  till  lately, 
they  have  had  to  pay  but  four  or  five  in  New  York, 
where  the  law  taxing  mortgages  was  a  dead  letter. 
There  was  a  new  enactment  in  1905,  however,  which 
wrought  great  hardship  and  obstructed  improvement, 
and,  as  already  said,  it  was  repealed  in  1905.  Mortgage 
taxation  is  somietimes  called  "as  broad  as  it  is  long", 
but  it  is  more  than  that:  for  in  Vermont,  California  and 
other  states  where  mortgages  are  taxed,  the  mortgagor, 
theoretically   at   least,   has   to   pay  not  only   his   high 


6io  Taxation.  [§  483  c 

interest,  but  also  on  the  full  valuation  of  the  real  estate, 
just  as  before  the  mortgage,  and  yet  again  on  the 
money  in  his  hands,  or  on  whatever  he  may  have  invested 
it  in.  But  the  number  of  states  where  that  occurs  is 
diminishing:  for  the  victims  of  course  take  part  in  the 
general  evasion  of  personal-property  taxes,  and  people 
are  becoming  alive  to  the  injustice  of  it.  Hence,  more 
and  more  of  the  states  which  tax  mortgages,  are  deduct- 
ing them  from  the  valuation  of  real  estate. 
.00,.,  «.  ^  Some  people  are  deceived  by  the  rea- 

483  W.   Mortqage  .  ^^   .^  ,  ■  <     .  .     ■ 

not  properly  Real  sonmg  that  a  mortgage  is  an  interest  m 
^*'"*®'  real  estate,  and  fairly  taxable  as  real  es- 

tate, and  in  fact,  mortgages  and  real  estate  have  logic- 
ally and  historically  (83)  enough  features  in  common 
to  deceive  a  good  many  persons.  But  as  long  as  the 
mortgagor  is  in  possession,  the  mortgage  is  only  a 
right  to  acquire  an  interest  in  the  real  estate  if  the  loan 
is  not  paid. 

483  (e).  In  differ-  It  sometimes  happens  that  a  man  living 
ent  states.  {-^  a  State  whcre  personal  property  is  taxed, 

owns  a  mortgage  on  a  piece  of  property  in  another  state 
— it  may  be  on  a  piece  of  private  property,  or  it  may 
be  the  bond  of  a  corporation,  and  the  mortgage  is  taxed 
in  the  state  where  the  property  is ;  and  suppose  that  the 
owner  of  the  mortgage,  living  in  a  different  state,  is 
also  taxed  on  it  as  personal  property.  Some  help  for 
this  state  of  affairs  may  have  been  recently  given  by 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court  in  holding  that  a  state 
can  tax  only  property,  business  and  persons  within  its 
borders.  Yet  the  first  state  can  hold  that  the  mortgage 
is  within  its  borders,  and  the  second  state  can  hold  that 
the  man  is  within  its.  More  help  is  in  people  gradually 
realizing  that  as  long  as  a  state  looks  for  revenue  from 
all  personal  property  owned  by  its  residents,  no  matter 
where  situated,  victims  of  such  laws  are  apt  to  move 
to  more  modern  states.  It  is  perhaps  as  much  to  save 
money  as  to  spend  it,  that  so  many  millionaires  from 
all  over  the  country  move  to  the  city  of  New  York, 
where,  despite  the  law  which  works  the  most  outrageous 


§  483/]  Double  Taxation.  611 

injustices  on  women  and  children,  there  is  really  little 
taxation  of  personal  property  in  the  hands  of  men  who 
can  take  care  of  themselves. 

Of  course  if  a  man  owns  mortgages  in  California,  and 
likes  to  enjoy  his  wealth  in  New  York,  he  should  pay 
taxes  there  for  the  privilege ;  and  he  cannot  avoid  paying. 
Taxes  on  most  things  he  buys,  and  on  the  stores  they 
come  from,  will  inevitably  be  shifted  to  him,  as  is 
proved  by  the  high  prices  of  everj^thing  in  New  York. 
Of  course  he  could  also  be  made  to  pay  rental-value  tax, 
if  New  York  were  yet  wise  enough  to  use  that  tax.  We 
saw  something  like  this  when  we  were  discussing  indirect 
taxes  on  personalty  (464) — that  a  tax  can  be  shifted 
most  readily  upon  those  who  will  have,  and  those 
who  must  have. 

If  a  man  in  a  state  where  personal  property  is  taxed, 
owns  stock  of  a  bank  in  another  state,  he  is  apt  to 
have  to  pay  on  it  twice:  the  bank  pays  once,  and  he 
often  pays  again. 

It  is  plain  how  a  state  can  collect  taxes  from  resi- 
dent corporations,  but  it  is  not  so  plain  how  it  can 
collect  on  a  mortgage  when  the  mortgagee  lives  in 
another  state:  for  he  does  not  own  the  land.  As 
already  explained,  it  is  unscientific  as  well  as  unjust, 
to  collect  on  it  at  all,  but  if  the  blunder  is  made,  the 
state  can  collect  on  the  mortgage  just  as  it  collects 
on  the  fee  simple  (88)  of  the  same  land  when  the  owner 
lives  in  another  state.  But  if  it  collects  taxes  on 
the  mortgage  by  selling  the  land,  it  would  compel  the 
mortgagor  to  pay  the  mortgagee's  taxes  or  lose  his 
own  equity  of  redemption  {^2))-  That  is  remedied,  in 
Massachusetts,  California,  Colorado  and  New  Zealand — 
483  rA  Letting  ^Y  letting  the  mortgagor  pav  any  taxes 
mortgagor  pay  Outstanding  wheu  his  interest  is  due,  and 
mortgagee  s  tax.  ^q^-^q^  them  from  the  interest.  Altho, 
as  said  above,  he  would  have  to  pay  a  rate  of  interest 
high  enough  to  cover  those  taxes;  at  worst,  if  the  sys- 
tem were  made  consistent  all  around,  by  taxing  the 
mortgage  value  but  once,  he  would  not  have  to  pay, 


6i2  Taxation.  [§  483/ 

as  he  sometimes  does 'now,  on  the  mortgage,  on  the 
money  in  his  hands,  and  on  the  full  fee  of  his  farm, 
but  only  on  the  equity  of  redemption. 
483 cgj.  conciu-  Our  conclusion,  then,  is  that  if  the  holder 

«'""•  of  land  owes  a  debt  which  can  be  definitely 

collected  from  that  land,  he  should  pay  the  full  taxes 
as  long  as  he  has  the  use  of  it.  If  the  creditor  is  taxed 
on  the  claim,  the  debtor  will  generally  have  to  pay  that 
tax  too,  in  which  case  his  land  should  be  exempted 
from  payment,  to  the  amount  which  is  the  subject  of  the 
claim.  Hence,  until  the  world  outgrows  the  taxation 
of  personal  property,  the  simplest  way  with  mortgaged 
property,  is  to  have  the  mortgagor  pay  only  on  his  equity 
of  redemption.  It  might  be  more  logical  to  offset  the 

mortgage  debt  against  his  personal  property — against 
the  mortgage  money  which  he  received,  but  he  may  not 
have  any  personal  property :  he  may  have  borrowed  the 
mortgage  money  to  pay  a  debt,  or  may  have  invested  it 
in  more  real  estate,  or  may  have  made  ducks  and  drakes 
with  it. 

But  as  affecting  the  ability  of  the  landowner  to  pay 
the  tax,  why  should  we  exempt  him  if  his  liability  is 
on  a  mortgage,  and  not  exempt  him  if  his  liability 
is  on  a  mere  note?  A  good  many  states  deduct  all 

debts  from  personalty  assessed.  But  if  they  do  not, 
they  have  "got  to  draw  the  line  somewhere".  A  good 
place  to  draw  it,  is  at  what  is  so  definitely  a  man's  that 
he  can  sell  it.  If  his  land  is  mortgaged,  he  can  sell 
only  the  equity.  If  it  is  not  mortgaged,  he  can  sell 
the  whole  of  it,  regardless  of  his  creditors,  tho  he  may 
owe  fifty  times  what  it  will  bring.  If  all  of  A's  property 
is  a  piece  of  real  estate,  and  B  holds  A's  note,  but  not 
a  mortgage,  that  note  can  be  collected  by  a  forced  sale 
of  the  real  estate,  just  as  a  mortgage  could,  but  it  is 
not  so  sure  an  interest  in  the  real  estate:  because  if  it 
484.  Why  tax  were  a  first  mortgage,  it  would  be  as  good 
mortgages  and  not  as  an  actual  ownership  of  the  land,  against 
"°*^^^  all    other    possible    creditors,    and    would 

probably  be  worth  its  face;  but  if  it  is  a  mere  note, 
forty-nine    other   creditors    might    have   just    as   much 


§  4S6]  Double  Taxation.  613 

interest  in  the  real  estate,  and  not  one  of  the  whole 
ffty  be  able  to  get  five  per  cent,  on  his  claim. 

Yet  there  is  no  subject  in  taxation  about  which 
there  has  been  more  quarreling  and  more  diverse  prac- 
tice. As  already  said,  some  states,  in  making  up  tax- 
schedules,  permit  the  deduction  of  all  a  man's  debts 
from  all  his  personal  property,  but  all  collect  rigidly  on 
the  full  value  of  his  real  estate,  whether  mortgaged  or 
not;  Massachusetts  allows  no  deduction  of  debts  from 
personal  property,  but  does  not  tax  mortgages  twice. 

And  there  is  reason  for  not  exempting  debts,  beyond 
the  necessity  of  "drawing  a  line  somewhere".  In  the 
states  where  debts  are  exempted,  it  is  astounding  how 
many  debts  in  proportion  to  their  assets,  some  of  the 
financial  magnates  have  about  listing  time,  while 
widows  and  orphans  often  have  no  debts  at  all. 

485.  Tax  all  record-  There  is  a  very  simple  principle  which 
ed  liens  "at  the  would  reduce  this  chaos  to  uniformity, 
source",  and  deduct  ■.^  ^  ■  ^  j.i  1  j.i  r  j.i  •  1 
them  from  value  of  Without  gomg  to  the  length  of  the  smgle 
property.  ^g^^ — g^  way  short  of  driving  taxpayers  into 
a  modern  state  to  get  rid  of  these  old-fashioned  double 
taxations.  It  is  to  become  a  modern  state,  and  tax 
only  what  is  of  record,  and  tax  it  against  the  recorded 
owner.  This  is  one  application  of  the  celebrated 
maxim  to  "tax  at  the  source".  Then,  if  the  thing 
taxed  is  a  lien  on  any  property,  of  course  that  property 
should  be  pro  tanto  exempt.  But  the  question  would 
be  avoided  by  not  taxing  liens. 

486.  Multiplied  Probably  the  most  general  form  of 
taxation,  especially  multiplied  taxation,  is  the  excises  on 
by  excises,  manufactured  articles.  Raw  materials  are 
often  taxed,  and  then  the  goods  taxed  again  in  each 
set  of  hands  they  pass  through:  for  instance,  trees  may 
be  taxed  as  standing  timber,  as  logs,  as  planks,  as 
strips  for  making  spools  or  awl-handles,  and  as  spools 
or  awl-handles.  Iron  may  be  taxed  as  ore  in  the  bed, 
as  ore  at  the  furnace,  as  pig,  as  bar,  as  extra-tempered 
fine  small  steel,  as  jackknives,  or  as  watch-springs,  and 
in  each  one  of  these  forms,  after  being  taxed  at  the 


6i4  Taxation.  [§486 

factory,  it  may  be  taxed  again  in  wholesalers'  hands, 
again  in  retailers'  hands,  and  again  in  consumers' 
hands.  Moreover,  should  it  stay  in  any  of  these  hands 
over  a  year,  it  may  be  taxed  again,  and  in  consumers' 
hands  taxed  every  year  till  it  rusts.  Verily,  manifold 
are  the  ways  of  taxation  of  personal  property!  As 
long  as  "mankind  is  a  fool"  (to  quote  Carlyle) — or  at 
least  American  mankind  (no  other  civilized  mankind 
is  enough  of  a  fool  to  attempt  the  direct  taxation  of 
personal  property),  the  only  remedy  is  to  "tax  at  the 
source" — tax  it  at  the  factory,  and  then  stop. 

But  what  factory — logging-camp,  sawmill,  turning- 
mill,  spool-factory,  or  where?  At  each  one,  if  you 
want  to :  each  one  adds  a  new  value  beside  which 
the  old  value  is  often  not  worth  considering.  But  do 
not  tax  the  completed  product  again  in  the  hands  of 
dealers  or  users.  If  the  tax  on  iron-ore  is  paid  over 
again  in  a  watch-spring;  or  that  on  logs,  in  a  spool, 
the  amount  of  material  is  so  trifling  that  it  makes  no 
appreciable  difference.  It  is  only  in  connection  with 
the  duplication  up  to  the  finished  product,  which  is 
serious,  that  this  sort  of  tax  is  generally  worth  noticing. 

Not  -all  cases  of  duplicated  or  multiplied  taxation 
are  equally  objectionable  with  those  we  have  considered; 
some  are  even  generally  approved — such,  for  instance, 
as  taxes  on  things  that  people  are  in  danger  of  using 
too  much  of,  like  liquors  and  tobacco.  There  are 
generally  excises  on  their  production,  and  duties  on  their 
importation,  and  additional  taxes  on  dealing  in  them. 
There  is  still  another  justification  for  .this  sort  of  du- 
plicated taxation,  that  there  is  not  for  taxing  mort- 
gages. The  excise-taxes  quite  generally  distribute 
themselves,  while  those  on  real  estate,  whether  on  fee 
or  on  the  mere  possibility  of  an  estate,  which  is  secured 
by  a  mortgage,  may  not  distribute  themselves  as  readily. 


CHAPTER   XLIII. 

SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSIONS  ON  TAXATION. 

Now  among  the  various  kinds  of  taxation  that  we 
have  considered,  with  the  glaring  objections  to  the 
worst,  and  the  perplexities,  inconsistencies  and  occa- 
sional injustices  of  even  the  best,  certainly  there  is  not 
one  alone  which  can  be  depended  upon,  at  least  until 
487  Perfect  taxa-  ^^^^^  nature  improves.  Taxation  is 
tionnot for imper-  after  all  mainly  a  matter  of  psychology: 
feet  people.  -^  ^^^^  -^^  adapted  to  the  people.     Sources 

of  revenue  run  all  the  way  from  lotteries  to  land — the 
semi-barbarian  at  one  end,  and  a  civilization  not  yet 
fully  realized  at  the  other.  A  wise  system  of  taxation 
must  consider  the  weaknesses  of  human  nature,  and 
also  the  various  complexities  arising  from  the  fact  that 
men  often  own  property  under  governments  different 
from  those  they  live  under. 

488.  Vampire-taxes  ^s  duties  and  excises  distribute  them- 
needed  now.  selves  SO  generally,  and  are  paid  with  so 

little  inconvenience,  it  is  generally  necessary,  in  the 
present  state  of  human  nature,  to  use  them.  But 
they  should  be  used  with  great  simplicity,  to  save 
expense  in  assessing  and  collecting;  with  great  caution 
against  corruption  by  interests  seeking  "protection"; 
and  mainly  on  luxuries,  so  that  the  poor  man  will  not  be 
paying  taxes  on  everything  he  buys.     Yet  it  is  eminently 

desirable  that  the  poor  man  have  an 
'^-u'aiue^Tafmay  interest  in  keeping  taxes  low,  and  such  in- 
uitmateiy  replace  tercst  is  not  kept  Very  wide  awake  by  a 

vampire-tax:  one  object  of  such  a  tax  is 

615 


6r6  Taxation.  [§  688  a 

to  keep  the  interest  asleep — its  "pinions  fan  the  wound 
it  makes  ". 

Yet  of  course  it  is  not  desirable  to  take  away  the 
vampire-taxes,  and  depend  on-  others  that  are  even 
worse :  a  small  minority  of  citizens  have  any  real  estate ; 
and  income,  succession  or  personal-property  taxes  are 
poor  substitutes  for  even  vampire-taxes:  the  fire  is 
worse  than  the  frying-pan,  as  remarked  at  least  once 
before  in  these  discussions.  But  if  a  man  does  not  own 

real  estate,  he  pays  rent,  and  the  rental-value  tax  will 
keep  him  much  more  alive  to  his  political  duties  than 
the  vampire-taxes  can,  besides  being  a  better  tax  in 
every  other  way. 

Until  we  are  educated  up  to  doing  without  the  vam- 
pire-taxes, we  can  learn  from  England  in  using  them. 
She  selects  a  few  articles — mainly  luxuries  on  which  peo- 
ple will  readily  pay  most,  and  confines  the  duties  and 
excises  to  them;  and  it  works  very  well.  The  trouble 
is  that  the  number  of  duties  and  excises  cannot  be 
kept  small:  all  interests  clamor  for  protection  in  the 
tariff;  and  in  every  exigency,  a  finance  minister  (in  a 
country  civilized  enough  to  have  one:  we  are  not)  tends 
to  clap  on  a  new  excise.  One  cannot  read  far  into  the 
subject  without  meeting  the  Dutchman's  thirty  taxes 
in  a  plate  of  soup.  Yet  there  has  been  some  improve- 
ment since  his  day,  in  countries  like  England,  where 
legislators  are  generally  chosen  from  the  educated 
classes,  and  have  read  the  world's  experience. 

Except  in  young  countries,  or  in  tariff  wars,  the  tariff 
should  be  only  on  articles  that  cannot  be  produced  at 
home:  this  prevents  a  number  of  interests  from  cor- 
rupting legislation,  and  trading  "protection"  with  each 
other. 

489.  Inquisition-  In    spitc    of    the    possible    necessity    of 

taxes  intolerable,  tolerating  indirect  taxes  because  of  the 
weaknesses  of  human  nature,  tariff -taxes  and  excise- 
taxes  have  not  only  the  faults  of  the  vampire-taxes, 
but  those  of  the  inquisition-taxes  too;  and  when  duties 
become  "protective",  they  become  oppressive  in  the 
bargain.     Protection  is  the  very  worst  form  of  taxa- 


§  49° '•^l  Summary  and  Conclusions.  617 

tion.  While  income,  inheritance  and  personal -property 
taxes  are  thoroughly  inquisitorial,  corrupting  and  im- 
practicable, yield  relatively  little,  cost  much  to  collect, 
and  so  should  never  be  used  except  in  dire  necessity,  if, 
then,  they  are  nevertheless  better  than  protective  taxes. 

490,  The  remote  Now  after  making  all  these  concessions 

i''^^''  to  the  hard  facts  of  human  nature,  let  us 

seek  a  little  ghmpse  of  the  ideal— of  what  may  ulti- 
mately come,  as  human  nature  improves.  We  have 
seen  that  Evolution  seems  to  tend  to  establish,  to  the 
exclusion  of  others,  taxes  on  the  land,  including  those 
on  franchises.  If  land  should  be  taxed  more  than 
other  things,  the  tax  would  be  paid  from  the  rent 
and  the  profits  of  managing  the  labor  upon  it,  not  from 
the  wages  of  the  labor:  wages  must  be  kept  up  to 
the  market  rate,  or  labor  would  not  go  upon  the  land: 
so  must  the  profits  of  ability,  for  the  same  reason. 
If  the  tax  were  so  heavy  as  to  eat  into  wages  and 
profits,  the  land  would  be  abandoned  unless  the  taxes 
were  lowered.  The,  taxes,  then,,  must,  in  the  long 
run,  come  out  of  the  rent.  Now  we  have  seen  that 
the  rent  comes  from  the  bounty  of  Nature — from  stifiti- 
490  m;.  Nature  cicnt  fertility,  or  special  fitness  for  other 
pays  some  taxes,    ^gg^  ^q    g^yg    g^   rctum    above  wagcs    and 

profits.  Then,  in  the  very  last  resort,  the  bounty  of 
Nature  pays  the  tax  on  land. 

A  franchise-tax  is  paid  by  something  very  like  the 
same  thing.  As  we  have  already  seen,  the  value  of  a 
franchise  is  mainly  in  its  real  estate ;  and  anyhow,  what- 
ever an  enterprise  pays  above  wages  and  ordinary  profits, 
must  in  the  long  run  come  from  some  unusual  advantage 
that  is  enough  of  a  monopoly  to  prevent  Ability  rush- 
ing in  to  compete  for  the  profits.  Now,  nobody 
consciously  creates  those  monopolistic  profits  of  an 
ordinary  franchise:  as  we  have  seen,  the  profits  of  a 
railway  or  water  company,  for  instance,  constantly 
tend  to  increase,  long  after  wages  and  ordinary  busi- 
ness profits  are  paid,  by  the  mere  clustering  of  people 
who  simply  mind  their  own  business,  without  paying 


6i8  Taxation.  [§  490  a 

the  franchises  in  question  any  attention  but  that  of 
use.  As  intimated  before,  so  far  as  any  human  effort 
is  concerned,  the  excessive  profits  of  such  franchises 
are  as  much  a  bounty  of  Nature,  as  the  rent  of  land  is. 

It  seems  plain,  then,  that  the  evolution  of  taxation 
seems  to  have  been  toward  restricting  it  to  land  and 
franchises,  and  that  such  taxes  are  paid  by  the  bounty 
of  Nature. 

But  the  question  arises  whether  enough  could  be 
got   from   these   sources.  It   is   pretty   hard   to   tell 

490  (b).  and  can  from  what  othcr  sources  many  taxes  ulti- 
pay  all.  matcly  come  now ;    only  we  get  them  in 

such  devious  ways  that  the  friction  and  labor  of  getting 
them  are  a  frightful  burden. 

490  (c).  A  ques-  Profcssor  Scagcr  (Introduction  to  Eco- 
tionabie  objection,  nomics)  says I  "The  more  intelligent  and 
the  more  social  the  population  becomes,  the  keener  will 
be  its  appreciation  of  the  common  needs,  and  the  larger 
the  fiscal  requirements  of  the  government  which  minister 
to  such  needs,  but  these  again  have  no  connection  with 
the  size  of  the  rent-fund."  His  boldness  in  denial 
should  perhaps  check  me  from  boldness  in  assertion. 
Proof  either  way  is  not  possible,  but  I  am  ready  to  rest 
the  case  on  the  assertion  that  "the  more  intelligent  and 
the  more  social  the  population  becomes",  the  greater 
inevitably  will  he  ''the  size  of  the  rent-fund",  and  vice 
versa,  each  being  both  cause  and  effect.  From  his  bold 
assertion,  he  deduces  very  logically  that  "the  contention 
that  a  tax  on  rent  would  by  itself  meet  all  of  the  require- 
ments of  government  at  all  times  may  thus  be  dis- 
missed as  visionary  ",  while  from  my  assertion  I  deduce 
just  the  opposite,  tho  what  I  would  deduce  regard- 
ing times  and  place  generally,  there  would  be  needless 
temerity  in  asserting  of  all. 

My  deduction,  however,  is  backed  up  by  the  facts  that 
in  many  communities  of  all  kinds,  urban  and  rural,  the 
tax  on  personal  property  has,  for  many  reasons  and  in 
many  ways,  been  virtually  abandoned;  and  that  those 
com.munities  have  never  found  any  difficulty  in  getting 
needed  revenue  from  the  land  and  its  improvements; 


§  49°  '^1  Summary  arid  Conclusions.  619 

aiid  this  has  succeeded  in  so  many  and  so  various 
communities,  that  there  are  many  reasons  for  beheving 
that  it  could  succeed  in  virtuaUy  alh  It  is  true,  however, 
that  the  taxes  raised  as  above  described,  have  never 
included  those  for  our  national  government.  The  ques- 
tion whether  they  too  could  be  included  in  the  system, 
is  outside  the  range  of  experience,  and  will  be  answered 
by  each  thinker  in  accordance  with  his  convictions  on 
collateral  points. 

490  w.  The  future  In  regard  to  the  future  of  taxation,  all 
of  taxation.  ^j^{g  opens  Up   a  bright   vision.     If  taxes 

enough  for  all  needs  could  thus  be  paid  from  the  bounty 
of  Nature  (and  there  seems  reason  to  think  they  could), 
we  would  be  rid  of  the  nuisances  of  custom-houses;  of 
the  injustices,  business  uncertainties  and  unutterable 
corruptions  of  the  Protective  System;  of  the  duplica- 
tions, petty  annoyances,  restraints  and  impediments 
to  business  in  all  excise  and  stamp  taxes;  of  the 
obstructions  to  business  occasioned,  and  the  perjury 
invited,  by  all  personal,  succession  and  income  taxes; 
of  the  obstacles  to  development  of  the  country,  in  all 
taxes  on  buildings  and  improvements ;  of  the  aid  to  the 
niggard's  saving,  and  the  obstruction  to  elegant  living 
and  generous  hospitality  involved  even  in  so  good  a  tax 
as  that  on  rental  value;  and  of  the  army  of  place- 
holders necessary  to  collect  all  these  taxes. 

The  ideal  seems  to  be  to  tax  no  human  effort  or  its 
results,  but  to  pay  the  expenses  of  government  from 
the  bounty  of  nature. 

And  yet,  despite  the  obvious  truths  just  recounted, 
ignorance  and  habit  so  befog  tax  commissions  generally 
that  instead  of  applying  their  ingenuity  to  getting  the 
taxes  onto  the  land,  they  generally  spend  their  time 
monkeying  (I  use  the  word  deliberately)  with  the  old  in- 
quisitorial and  vampire  schemes,  and  devising  new  forms 
of  them.  An  honorable  exception  to  this,  in  one  particu- 
lar, was  indicated  in  the  minority  report  of  the  New  York 
commission  before  alluded  to :  it  recommended  a  ' '  hab- 
itation" tax — a  better  name  for  the  excellent  "rental- 


620  Taxation.  [§  490  (i 

value"  tax  of  England.  But  as  already  said,  the  com- 
mittee boggled  its  recommendation  by  wanting  the  land- 
lord to  collect  and  pay  it  over,  altho  the  landlord,  as 
such,  has,  in  principle,  nothing  whatever  to  do  with 
the  tax  beyond  owning  the  property  which  determines 
its  amount. 

490  ce;.  No  hard-  True,  the  land-taxes  would  come  out  of 
ship  to  landowners,  ^j^^t  portion  of  the  bounty  of  Nature 
which  has  been  secured  by  the  landowners,  but  as 
already  shown  (472  e,  472  /),  taking  taxes  from  it, 
instead  of  from  personal  property,  would  not  make 
nearly  all  the  difference  to  those  people,  that  at  first 
sight  it  seems  to :  generally,  they  would  be  merely  paying 
from  one  pocket  instead  of  several,  and  it  looks  as  if  the 
proceeding,  while  doing  them  little,  if  any,  harm, 
would  be  vastly  to  the  advantage  of  the  community  in 
general.  The  vast  increase  of  the  tax  return  that 
could  properly  be  had  from  the  franchises,  would  tend 
to  keep  down  the  burden  on  the  landowner.  Consider- 
ing that,  and  the  vampire  and  inquisition  taxes  which 
owners  of  ordinary  real  estate  already  pay  in  addition 
to  the  realty-tax,  and  the  expense  of  collecting  them, 
it  is  probable  that  the  ideal  system  would  materially 
reduce  their  present  burdens.  At  all  events,  as 
already  said:  many  of  the  landlords,  including  the  most 
intelligent  portion,  seem  ready  to  have  all  taxation 
derived  from  their  real  estate.  They  want  the  direct  tax 
on  personal  property  removed,  they  are  generally  op- 
posed to  income  and  succession  taxes,  and  not  a  few 
of  them  are  opposed  to  tariff  and  excise  taxes. 

490  r/;.  Amorti-  And  yet  it  is  true  that  each  tax  put  on 
^'^^'°"-  a  piece  of  real    estate,  lessens  its  selling 

value.  The  tax  is  amortized,  as  they  call  it — deadened 
— into  the  value  of  the  real  estate.  A  tax  of  $5  a 
year,  for  instance,  would  amortize  the  value  of  the 
estate  about  a  hundred  dollars,  as  it  is  5  per  cent,  income 
from  a  hundred  dollars.  But  as  real  estate  in  the  set- 
tled portions  of  the  country  has  been  pa^^ing  a  larger 
and  larger  share  of  the  taxes  for  a  long  time,  in  many 


§49°^]  Summary  and  Conclusions.  621 

places  its  tax  burden  must  be  pretty  much  amortized 
already.  And  yet  the  value  of  real  estate  seems  to 
advance,  on  the  whole,  faster  than  amortization  has 
pulled  it  down — and  especially  in  the  very  places  where 
it  pays  the  largest  share  of  the  taxes. 

It  looks  as  if  this  process  is  to  go  farther — as  if 
people,  as  they  get  wiser,  are  going  to  throw  off  more 
and  more  of  the  stupid  taxes,  and  real  estate  will  have 
to  bear  more  and  more,  except  as  franchises  relieve  it. 

But  will  real  estate  become  valueless  in  conse- 
quence? It  certainly  has  not,  so  far;  and  as  every- 
thing that  benefits  the  community  benefits  real  estate, 
it  seems  probable  that  the  removal  of  the  stupid  taxes 
will  benefit  real  estate  even  more  than  wise  taxes  will 
harm  it,  the  difference  being  made  up  in  economy  of 
collection,  and  other  economies. 

The  effect  of  the  apparently-coming  system  on  the 
poor  man's  taxes,  would  be  that  instead  of  paying,  as 
490  cg;.  A  boon  now,  indirect  taxes  on  nearly  everything 
to  the  poor.  ^iq  ^^ises,  lie  would  simply  have  to  pay  no 

taxes  at  all,  except  as  the  real-estate  tax  should  distrib- 
ute itself  as  far  as  him.  It  could  not  help  affecting 
his  wages  favorably,  because  business,  being  relieved  of 
tariffs,  excises,  stamps,  and  taxes  on  plant  and  goods, 
would  flourish  better;  the  demand  for  labor  would  con- 
sequently be  better,  and  so  work  would  be  steadier  and 
wages  higher. 

But  the  argument  which  has  led  up  to  this  bright 
picture,  may  seem  to  yield  the  claim  of  Henry  George 
that  government  has  a  right  to  take  all  economic 
rent  by  taxation.  Yet  it  really  does  not;  for  noth- 
ing in  it  involves  government  taking  more  than  its  legiti- 
mate needs.  George  claimed  that  it  should  take  all, 
and  use  the  excess  over  legitimate  needs,  in  pauperizing 
the  community.  In  addition  to  that  disastrous  effect, 
would  be  the  one  probably  equally  disastrous,  of  destroy- 
ing all  the  advantages  which  we  have  seen  to  be  inherent 
in  private  ownership  of  land,  and  which  we  have  also 
seen  that  some  of  the  loudest  of  the  alleged  followers 
of  Henry  George  also  make  the  same  claim  for. 


62  2  Taxation.  ^  [§  490/^ 

Yet  a  sole  dependence  on  real-estate  and  franchise 
taxes  is  open  to  one  very  serious  objection  that  was 
raised  against  indirect  taxes :  unless  a  man 
'dwje'aiu'itizens'  Owned  land  or  shares  in  a  franchise  cor- 
poration, his  stake  in  economical  govern- 
ment would  seem  to  him  even  less  than  under  a  system 
of  purely  indirect  taxation.  Under  that,  he  may  not 
know  he  is  taxed;  but  under  our  new  ideal  system,  he 
would  not  be  taxed  at  all,  except  so  far  as  real-estate 
taxes  may  be  diffused  to  him.  The  best  way  to  meet 
this  difficulty  would  be  to  encourage  and  help  each  man 
to  own  at  least  his  home,  and  meanwhile  to  bring  in  the 
best  of  the  other  taxes  we  have  examined — the  rental- 
value  tax — ^to  make  every  voter  pay  a  tax  according  to 
his  rate  of  living,  whether  he  lives  in  a  palace  or  an 
attic — to  make  him  realize  that  he  has  a  stake  in  the 
government,  if  it  is  but  a  dollar  a  year. 

True,  there  are  numbers  of  sovereign  American  citi- 
zens whose  vote  counts  as  much  as  anybody's,  who 
never  have  as  much  at  a  time  as  a  dollar  to  pay  a  tax 
with.  Perhaps  it  is  time  to   have  their  vote  stop 

"counting  as  much  as  anybody's" — to  have  them  stop 
disposing  of  other  people's  money:  for  the  frightful 
wastes  and  stupidities  in  .our  taxation  are  largely  due 
to  their  votes. 

491,  Causes  of  O^  course  the  adoption  of  a  system  of 

^ielay.  taxation  promising  so  much  good,  is  ob- 

structed by  the  same  ignorance  and  stupidity  which 
A^\  (a).  Ignorance  obstruct  most  good  things.  Moreover,  the 
and  self-seeking,  system  docs  not  promisc  much  immediate 
good  to  the  owners  of  franchises,  and  they  own  most 
of  the  legislatures.  Of  course  landowners  would  favor 
the  single  land-tax  still  more  if  they  were  sure  of  liberal 
franchise-taxes  to  lessen  their  own.  But  many  land- 
owners, especially  the  farmers,  will  obstruct  it  anyhow, 
until  they  understand  it  better.  It  is  also  opposed 

by  a  stronger  and  better  organized  and  more  interested 
element  than  the  farmers  or,  perhaps,  the  franchise- 
owners,  namely,  the  manufacturers.  They  spend  enor- 
rrious  sums  in  keeping  up  the  so-called  protective  system. 


§  491  ^]  Summary  and  Conclusions.  623 

491  (b).  In  the  u.  s.  But  there  is  a  firmer  obstacle  than  even 
Constitution.  ^|-^g    protective    system,   to    the    national 

government  taxing  land. 

As  we  saw  (4660),  the  National  Constitution  op- 
poses it,  and  it  is  probably  harder  to  amend  our 
National  Constitution  (Art.  V)  than  even  to  get  rid  of 
the  protective  system.  Yet  constitutional  amendments 
are  possible,  with  the  growth  of  wisdom,  and  some- 
times in  spite  of  it.  Moreover,  a  tariff  system  is  not 
necessarily  a  so-called  "protective"  one,  as  Great 
Britain  has  shown,  tho  it  is  very  hard  to  prevent  its 
becoming  so. 

The  great  hope  for  the  future  is  in  more  education — 
moral  as  well  as  economic.  It  is  sad,  tho,  that  so 
much  of  it  must  still  come,  as  perhaps  the  most  valu- 
able education  generally  does,  through  struggle  and 
waste. 


CHAPTER   XLIV. 

GENERAL    SUMMARY    AND    CONCLUSIONS. 

We  have  merely  touched  the  outhnes  of 
492,.  General  con-    the  comphcated  questions  we  have  treated: 

c  US  ions  rGffsrciinff  ^ 

the  Civic  Relations,  the  discussion  of  them  has  run  into 
Hbraries,  and  is  increasing  at  a  geometric 
rate.  Then  we  should  expect  them  to  be  handled 
by  the  half-educated  men  who  compose  the  majority 
of  our  legislatures,  just  as  they  have  been  handled 
since  the  debt  for  the  civil  war  increased  their  diffi- 
culty— with  probably  less  wisdom  and  more  corrup- 
tion than  in  any  other  nation  among  the  great  powers. 
The  only  remedy  is  to  increase  the 
fofexjerts".""*'""'  respect  for  knowledge,  and  the  scorn  of 
corruption,  and  to  get  legislatures  in  the 
way  of  leaving  such  questions  to  expert  and  faithful 
men,  even  if,  as  they  even  now  are  sometimes  wise 
enough  to,  they  have  to  call  upon  commissions  chosen 
outside  of  their  own  members.  As  we  saw  (420),  it 
is  becoming  more  and  more  the  custom  to  leave  matters 
requiring  expert  knowledge,  in  the  hands  of  expert  com- 
missions; and  it  is  becoming  recognized  here  and  there, 
as  indicated  by  John  Stuart  Mill,  that  the  ideal  govern- 
ment toward  which  society  seems  tending,  will  consist 
mainly  of  a  number  of  bodies  of  experts  acting  under 
a  central  administration  distinguished  for  judgment  and 
executive  capacity,  rather  than  for  expert  knowledge. 
Probably  the  large  miscellaneous  legislative  assemblies 
will  eventually  disappear.  Already  their  sittings  begin 
to  the  regret  of  the  intelligent,  and  end  to  their  relief. 

624 


§  494^]         General  Summary  and  Conclusions.  625 

In  some  places  where  the  sessions  of  the  legislatures 
were  once  annual,  they  have  already  been  made  biennial; 
and  so  great  an  authority  as  the  late  Mr.  Godkin  favored 
their  entire  abolition. 

■494.  Evolution  of  Let  us  supplement  our  detailed  atten- 
the  Civic  Relations,  tion  to  the  Civic  Relations  by  a  review 
of  the  ground  we  have  been  over,  and  a  few  general 
conclusions  that  cover  it  all. 

From  ancestors  very  low  in  the  scale  of  being — igno- 
rant, improvident,  lazy,  unmoral  and  solitary,  have 
been  evolved  civilized  men — with  knowledge,  fore- 
thought, energy,  morality  and  the  inestimable  advan- 
tages of  civil  life.  But  we  seem  to  have  as  yet  reached, 
at  best,  a  very  humble  stage  of  the  evolution,  and  that 
best  has  been  reached  by  but  few :  the  vast  majority  of 
mankind  are  still,  by  comparison  with  the  few  in  ad- 
vance, ignorant,  improvident,  and  (the  worst  of  them) 
lazy,  dishonest,  and  even  solitary — their  hands  against 
every  man,  and  every  man's  hands  against  them. 

The    control    of    the    means    of    happiness — largely 
included  under  the  name  of  wealth,  is  of  course,  despite 
exceptions,,  mainly  in  the  hands  of  the  few  possessing 
knowledge,  forethought,  energy  and  honesty. 
494  m;.  and  of  Very  naturally' those  who  do  not  possess 

the,, problems.  wealth,  waut  it;  and  such  of  them  as  can 
exercise  the  virtues  which  produce  it,  generally 
get  it:  most  of  those  who  have  it,  have  produced 
it  for  themselves,  the  a  few  have  inherited  or  stolen 
it  from  the  producers.  But  the  unfortunate  majority 
who  lack  the  wealth-producing  virtues,  naturally  wish 
to  get  the  wealth  without  exercising  the  virtues — 
to  make  water  run  upward  without  supplying  the 
power — to  get  something  out  of  nothing;  and  so 
they,  and  many  half-reasoning  sympathizers,  have  in- 
vented all  sorts  of  impossible  schemes  of  the  perpetual- 
motion  order,  for  accomplishing  that  result. 
494  r6;.  Rapid  Recent   times   have   been  preeminently 

accumulation  of  the  timcs  of  nostrums :  for  the  average 
nostrums.  ^^^  ^^^  ^^^^  lifted  out    of    the    soddcu 


62  6  General  Summary  and  Conchisions.        [§4946 

ignorance  and  indifference  of  a  century  ago,  into  some 
conception  of  better  conditions,  some  hope  of  obtaining 
them,  and  abundant  readiness  to  attempt  any  way  of 
doing  so  that  may  dazzle  his  attention.  He  has  been 
givena  vote,  too,  and,  tho  he  generally  has  no  more  idea 
of  what  to  do  with  it  than  if  it  were  a  spectroscope,  he  is. 
very  full  of  the  idea  that  with  it  he  can  work  miracles. 

While  he  is  often  averse  to  taking  from  those  who  have 
more,  unless  he  disguise  the  process,  even  to  himself, 
by  some  sophistr}/,  he  is  very  ready  for  any  scheme 
under  such  disguise ;  and  his  recent ' '  little  learning ' '  and 
the  wide  diffusion  of  it,  has  spread  many  sophistries  and 
schemes  based  on  them. 

Yet  the  sympathies  must  be  dull  which  do  not  give  any 
response  to  his  efforts.  It  seems  very  hard  that  to 
only  one  man  in  many  should  be  open  the  enjoyment 
of  art  and  literature  and  refined  society;  but  it  is  surely 
better  that  they  should  exist  for  the  few  than  that 
they  should  not  exist  at  all;  and  such,  so  far,  has  been 
Nature's  way.  But  through  the  human  agents  she  has 
evolved,  she  is  spreading  these  advantages  at  a  rate 
which  has  lately  increased  to  astonish  us,  and  which, 
it  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  say,  must  in  a  time  that 
we  can  foresee,  include  all  men.  There  is  overwhelming 
evidence  in  schools,  libraries,  settlements,  legal-aid 
societies  and  other  benefactions,  that  the  more  able 
men  do  respond  to  the  need  of  the  less  able,  and  are 
eager  to  aid  them  in  all  efforts  that  are  reasonable  and 
hopeful.  Indeed,  efforts  that  are  foolish,  hopeless, 
even  destructive  and  suicidal,  have  engaged  the  support 
of  many  of  the  well-to-do  whose  sympathies  are  stronger 
than  their  intelligence. 

495.  The  Labor  Impatient  as  cool  reason  may  be  with 
^^^^^'  it  all,  there  is  something  pathetic  about  it: 
for  many  of  the  enthusiasts  are  as  sincere  in  their 
faith,  and  as  ready  to  sacrifice  themselves  for  it,  as 
any  other  fanatics  have  ever  been  for  theirs. 

496.  The  labor  ^^^  under  all  these  theories  is  a  ques- 
questionarealques-  tion  rootcd  in  much  deeper  soil  than  the 
don  for  real  reason   shallow   inventions   of   the    dreamer    and 


§  497]  General  Summary  and  Conclusions.  627 

the  quack.  The  "labor  question"  is  a  very  real  strug- 
gle for  shares  of  a  product  that  must  be  divided,  and  a 
struggle  that  will  last  as  long — which  will  probably 
be  very  long  indeed — as  men  are  too  near-sighted  to 
see  the  broadest  self-interest  in  the  general  interest. 
In  this  real  struggle,  the  unreal  remedy  must  dominate 
the  vulgar  mind — the  remedy,  as  so  often  said,  of  get- 
ting wages  higher  than  the  equation  of  supply  and 
demand.  That  the  trade-unions  have  done  great  ser- 
vice, and  may  yet  do  great  service,  in  keeping  wages 
up  to  the  point  of  equation,  is  undoubted;  but  they 
have  lost  all  sight  of  that  intention,  and  think  only  of 
forcing  wages  to  any  height  attainable  through  any 
means,  no  matter  what  bruises,  what  fatal  over- 
strains, and  what  falls  may  result. 

497.  Aggression  Originally  combined  against  the  em- 
begets  aggression,  pioyers'  aggressions,  the  workmen  have 
themselves  become  the  aggressors.  The  employers  are 
now  combining  against  the  workmen's  aggressions, 
and  soon  will  be  in  renewed  danger  of  becoming  the 
aggressors  themselves.  Meanwhile,  the  community  in 
general  is  combining  against  the  aggressions  of  both, 
and  in  that  combination  are  even  some  of  the  com- 
batants on  both  sides:  so  clearly  can  men  see  the 
wrong  in  others'  acts  which  they  are  blind  to  in  their 
own.  The  waste  on  both  sides  is  frightful,  but  it  must 
gradually  force  a  recognition  that  the  wisest  poHcy  for 
both  sides  is  to  facihtate  the  operation  of  supply  and 
demand,  instead  of  opposing  it;  and  to  help  each'other 
instead  of  hindering  each  other.  With  this  recog- 
nition, must  gradually  emerge  conditions  under  which 
wages  will  be  so  high  that  the  productive  power  of  the 
men  will  be  at  its  best;  and  so  low  that  labor  and  its 
resulting  commodities  can  be  obtained,  by  laborers  and 
all,  as  cheaply  as  our  control  of  Nature's  forces  permits. 
Society  will  gradually  obtain  its  rightful  control  of 
natural  monopolies,  and  secure  that  no  artificial 
'  monopoly  of  either  labor  or  capital  shall  stand  in  the 
way  of  the  general  good — that  no  monopoly  of  either 
mines  or  miners'  labor  shall  stop  the  supp'ly  of  fuel; 


628  General  Summary  and  Conchisions.  [§  497 

that  no  monopoly  of  either  food  or  food-producing 
labor  shall  limit  the  supply  of  food;  that  no  monopoly 
of  either  any  good  thing  or  the  labor  supplying  any 
good  thing  shall  limit  the  availability  of  that  good 
thing.  The  strength  of  one  of  the  opposing  forces 
will  continue  at  times  to  force  conditions  too  far  one 
way,  then  the  other  force  will  drive  them  too  far  the 
other  way;  but  those  wielding  the  forces,  and  those 
affected  by  them,  are  fast  learning  through  bitter 
experience,  where  the  points  of  reason  lie,  and  the 
movements  beyond  them  on  either  side  must  gradu- 
ally grow  less  and  less. 

Meanwhile  the  mistaken  schemes  not  only  obstruct 
the  production  of  wealth,  and  make  money  flow  in 
the  wrong  direction — from  the  poor  to  the  rich,  rather 
than  from  the  rich  to  the  poor,  but  they  befog  the 
popular  intelligence,  and  obscure  the  fact  that,  so  far 
as  happiness  comes  from  anything  but  a  clear  con- 
science, a  contented  mind  and  a  loving  heart,  it  comes 
from  knowledge,  forethought,  energy,  honesty  and  the 
political  freedom  which  can  be  had  only  from  civic 
enlightenment  and  the  strict  performance  of  public 
duty:  thus  the  mistaken  schemes  are  among  the  chief 
obstacles  to  the  improvement  of  government. 

497 ^a;.  Euoiutior,  Among  beasts  and  very  primitive  men, 
of  vices  in  gov-  where  there  is  no  wisdom  and  no  patriot- 
ernmeni.  ism,  government  is  of  course  that  of  the 

strongest.  Later,  cunning  plays  some  part;  and,  in 
time,  higher  forms  of  wisdom  come  in,  and  those  pos- 
sessing military  and  civic  ability  gradually  share  in  the 
government.  But  lately  the  need  of  capacity  in  direct- 
ing government,  has  gradually  been  ignored,  becatise  of 
reactions  against  tyranny,  because  of  sentiment alism, 
and  of  competition  between  parties  for  popular  votes. 
While  on  one  hand,  as  we  have  seen,  public  education  is 
maintained  at  enormous  expense  on  the  ground  that 
an  ignorant  man  is  not  fit  to  vote,  on  the  other  hand, 
demagogues  vie  with  each  other  in  devices  to  enable 
men  who  cannot  even  read,  to  cast  the  ignorant  vote  on 


§499^]      General  Summary  and  Conclusions.  629 

which  the  demagogue  depends;  and  many  sentimen- 
tahsts  not  intentionally  demagogues  cooperate  with 
them.  In  the  extreme  instances — America  and  France, 
suffrage  has  become  universal:  the  incapable  majority 
now  exercise  the  power,  except  as  a  capable  minority 
can  influence  them;  and  consequently  the  governments 
(especially  many  of  the  local  American  ones)  are  vastly 
more  stupid  and  corrupt  than  those  of  the  other  nations 
anywhere  near  the  same  intellectual  and  moral  plane  in 
other  respects.  Undoubtedly  some  believed  that  in 
the  ballot — the  standard  of  liberty,  there  was  magic  to 
enlighten  and  convert  all  who  touched  it.  But  experience 
has  not  increased  the  belief.  And  now  that  standard 
has  been  flung  into  the  ranks  of  the  enemy,  and  there 
it  stays. 

498,  Improve  suf-  How  to  rescue  it,  seems  an  almost  in- 
*^''2ge.  soluble  question.  Possibly  it  can  be  done 
by  making  those  incapable  of  appreciating  it,  incapa- 
ble of  holding  it;  certainly  it  could  be  done  by  mak- 
ing more  of  those  holding  it,  capable  of  appreciating 
it.  Yet  the  question  does  not  even  present  itself  to 
the  increasing  number  of  those  who  dream  of  a  per- 
fect world  of  imperfect  men.  But  in  spite  of  them, 
the  question  is  constantly  demanding  solution,  and  if 
Spencer's  expectations  regarding  socialism  (31  a)  are 
realized,  the  solution  will  only  be  reached  through 
blood.  But  such  pessimistic  fears  are  not  inevitable. 
Already  a  reaction  back  to  limited  suffrage  has  been 
forced  upon  some  of  our  states,  and  there  are  a  good 
many  indications  that  that  reaction  will  spread.  But, 
better  still,  there  is  a  degree  of  attention  paid  to  the 
Civic  Relations  that  was  not  dreamed  of  a  generation 
ago;  and  this  is  especially  the  case  in  the  universities, 
whence  the  education  must  inevitably  filter  downward. 

499.  Evolution  not  Notwithstanding  all  discouragements,  we 
all  negative.  may  recognize  many  other  grounds  for 
sire  for'weaith^'  hopc.  The  vcry  desire  for  wealth,  de- 
beneficiai.  spite  all  the  evils  it  has  brought,  has  done 
more  to  evolve  the  virtues  which  produce  wealth,  than 
all  other  agencies  put  together;   and  also,  by  a  strange 


630  Ge-.-iCral  Summary  and  Conclusions.       [§4990 

paradox,  the  absence  of  wealth  has  done  as  much  to 
evolve,  in  both  rich  and  poor,  virtues  nobler  than  even 
those  which  create  wealth — sympathy,  generosity, 
philanthropy.  Let  us  reflect,  too,  that  the  difficulties 
of  good  government  have  been  equally  powerful  in 
developing  the  other  civic  virtues. 

«  I  confess  that,  having  started  with  a 
tfeVot'eli'ftence^'  faith  that  progress  can  be  hoped  for  only 
ceasing  to  be  a  through  the  struggle  for  existence  and  the 
survival  of  the  fittest,  this  appearing  to  be 
the  only  course  supported  by  natural  law,  I  have  come 
to  realize  that  with  the  evolution  of  intelhgence  and 
sympathy,  standards  of  fitness  to  survive  have  mate- 
rially changed,  and  that  the  struggle  for  existence  has 
materially  changed  with  them.  Now  the  struggle  of 
brute  force  has  become  a  struggle  of  intelligence,  and 
even  a  competition  in  honesty  and  amiability:  the 
wide  industry  of  commercial  traveling  is  largely  a 
competition  in  amiability  and  personal  agreeableness; 
the  business  houses  that  can  most  be  depended  upon, 
are  those  which  oftenest  succeed.  With  complexity  of 
industry  has  come  interchange  of  function,  and  with 
that,  even  sometimes  a  competition  in  mutual  ser- 
vice: for  instance,  the  hotels  do  what  they  can  to 
help  the  railroads  and  amusements,  while  the  rail- 
roads and  amusements  do  what  they  can  to  help  the 
hotels.  The  vast  majority  of  people  have  long  got  the 
very  best  in  their  lives,  not  by  struggling  with  all  others 
for  food  and  shelter,  but  by  mutual  support.  As  soon 
as  the  family  was  evolved,  the  struggle  was  suspended 
between  the  members  of  it,  and  turned  into  that  mutual 
support.  This  process  soon  embraced  the  clan,  and 
then  spread  into  the  tribe  and  nation.  Very  early, 
the  benefits  of  security  and  order  were  obtained  by 
supporting,  not  struggling  against,  rulers,  generals  and 
priests.  And  as  literature  and  art  and  science  and  edu- 
cation are  evolved,  the  original  contribution  to  sup- 
port the  ruler  is  distributed  among  a  great  mass  of 
government  officials,  and  among  diplomats  and  students 


§  499  '-^]       General  Stmmiary  and  Conclusions.  631 

and  teachers  of  political  science;  while  the  contribution 
to  support  the  priest  is  likewise  shared  by  those  students 
and  teachers,  as  well  as  by  authors,  actors,  musicians 
and  other  artists  of  all  descriptions.  And  while  the 
reflective  student  will  realize  that  members  of  these 
groups  still  are  condemned  to  the  struggle  for  existence 
among  themselves,  that  struggle  is  virtually  only  on 
the  fringes  of  the  groups — among  the  members  whose 
claim  to  positions  in  the  groups  is  doubtful;  and  he 
will  also  realize  that  even  this  struggle  is  not  "red  in 
tooth  and  claw",  but  a  competition  as  to  who  shall 
discover  the  best  truth,  or  teach  it  best,  write  best, 
sing  best,  act  best,  paint  best. 

499  cc;.  Wisdom  Even  in  the  world  where  the  food  and 
and  sympathy  drink  come  froHi,  the  survivor  is  not  the 
gaming  con  ro.  gtrougcst  brute,  but  the  wiscst  and  often 
the  gentlest  and  kindest  man,  to  provide  for  whose 
material  wants  is  often  the  very  salvation  of  men  better 
fitted  than  he  to  survive  in  the  merely  physical  struggle. 
On  the  other  hand,  through  the  reciprocation  of  this 
man,  the  world  is  progressing,  in  spite  of  its  being 
sometimes  held  back  by  his  using  his  superior  intelli- 
gence to  despoil  others.  But  generally  he  uses  it  to 
devise  work  for  them,  to  organize  them,  to  get  the 
most  possible  out  of  them  by  caring  for  them,  not  by 
Consuming  them;  to  dispose  of  the  product  so  that 
they  can  get  the  greatest  variety  and  amount  of  goods 
in  exchange;  and  to  share  with  them  the  surplus  which 
his  talents  secure,  in  better  housing  and  means  of  recre- 
ation, instruction  and  entertainment. 

How  far  these  shall  be  his  voluntary  gifts 
not  be'folced."""  administered  under  his  direction,  and  how 
far  the  cost  of  them  shall  be  taken  from 
him  and  administered  by  the  state,  is  a  complex  and 
difficult  question.  As  a  fact,  however,  whether  they 
come  by  taxation  or  by  gift,  they  come  from  him. 
The  question  is  how  to  get  the  most  of  them  out  of  him. 
.They  will  not  come  at  all  if  he  is  discouraged  from 
producing  the  wherewithal.  There  is  no  other  source 
of  them  under  heaven  but  him.     Tax  him  in  the  hope 


632  General  Summary  and  Conclusions.      [§  490c? 

of  dividing  his  large  share  of  production,  in  the  shape 
of  government  gratuities,  among  those  who  produce 
less,  and  you  discourage  his  production;  banish  him 
by  taxation,  as  he  has  already  been  banished  from 
more  than  one  place,  and  the  place  reverts  to  primi- 
tive conditions:  probably  his  energy  cannot  be  sup- 
pressed by  robbing  him,  but  will  simply  be  driven  else- 
where. But  withdraw  his  gtddance  in  any  way,  unless 
he  appear  again,  in  a  new  incarnation  of  the  divine, 
those  he  guided  revert  only  to  primitive  production. 
499  re;,  Their  Yet  it  is  for  him,  and  for  those  whose 

necessary  creed,  gtudies  fit  them  to  act  with  him  in  the 
shaping  of  wise  policies,  to  dwell  on  the  old  old  truth 
illustrated  in  all  forms  and  stages  of  human  evolution, 
that  the  only  wa}^  for  the  strong  and  wise  to  make 
their  own  prosperity  and  opportunities  secure,  is  to 
make  the  state  which  protects  them,  a  state  of  en- 
lightened, thrifty,  virtuous,  and  therefore  prosperous, 
happy  and  contented  people. 


INDEX. 


(References  are  to  pages.) 


Ability  (^e^  aZ^o  capital;  en- 
terpriser; wealth),  a  source 
of  property,  42,  44  ft.;  private 
property  in  land  stimulates,  49 ; 
required  in  farming,  5  5 ;  de- 
fined, 87;  product  varies  with, 
87,  105;  wages  vary  with,  89, 
105,  340,  541;  conflict  between 
labor  and,  90;  functions  of,  91 
ff.;  and  averages,  92;  finds 
work,  93 ;  increases  product,  94, 
100;  saves  waste,  94;  outside 
of  tangible  production,  97  ;  re- 
ward of,  loi;  cannot  afford  to 
grind  labor  or  capital,  107; 
capital  and  labor  powerless  with- 
out, 107;  of  handworkers,  108; 
comparative  profits  in  different 
fields  of,  109;  few  have  great, 
no;  is  increasing,  no;  politi- 
cal, lacking  in  America,  146; 
essential  to  securing  free  labor, 
154;  how  affected  by  com- 
munism, 222  ff. ;  by  socialism, 
225  ff.;  forcing,  to  guide  labor, 
227;  powers  of,  228;  private 
property  a  conseciuence  of, 
229;  and  desert,  240;  affecting 
diffusion  of  wealth,  326;  how 
cultivated,  347 ;  should  not  be 
paralyzed  by  law,  354;  move- 
ments of,  influenced  by  taxa- 
tion, 532 

.  Accidents,  protecting  labor- 
ers against,  2S7;  and  closed 
shop,  287 


Accommodation  Paper,  162 

Act  of  God  or  the  public 
enemy,  166,  181,  183 

Adams,  T.  S.,  on  strikes  and 
lockouts,  251,  252  n.,  271,  274n., 
410;  on  labor  laws,  283;  on 
public  franchises,  410  n. 

Administrators,  201 

Advertisements,  government 
loss  in  carrying,  412 

Affirmation  and  oath,  164 

Agency  (see  also  agents)  by 
necessity,  192 

Agents,  190;  liable  for  ex- 
ceeding avithority,  191;  cannot 
make  any  profit  for  themselves, 
192;  liable  with  principal  in 
wrong-doing,  193;  superior  gen- 
erally liable,  193;  responsible 
for  subagents,   194;    classes  of, 

195 

Agreement  (see  also  con- 
tract), 152 

Aid,  government,  for  building 
railroads,  411 

Alabama,  unlawful  acts  in, 
279 

Alexandria,  Va.,  electricity 
in,  441 

Alienation  of  estates,  204 

America,  all  property  in, 
owned  collectively  by  all  the 
people,  236 

American  Federation  of  Labor, 
254,  261  «.,  282 

American  Steel  Co.,  255 

633 


634 


Index. 


Amortization,  620 

Anarchism,  219;  remedy  for, 
proposed  by  Judge  Arnquist 
and  the  author,   220 

Anti-Boycott  Association  {ce 
also  boycotts),  261 

"Antient  Light",  So 

Anti-Injunction  Bill  {-ce  also 
injunction),  261  n.,  282 

Anti-Trust  Law  of  1890,  136 
fE.;  difficulty  of  getting  ad- 
vantages out  of  such  laws,  137; 
and  the  railroads,  138 

Apprentices,  limiting  number 
of,  253 

Appropriation-Tax  (taking 
whole  value  of  land),  595,  603 

Appurtenances,  80 ;  party 
walls,  81;  land  beside  roads, 
81;   land  by  water,  81 

Arbitration,  comr>uisory,  297 
ff.;  and  private  contract  con- 
tradictory, 317,  318;  step  to- 
ward state  socialism,  319;  vol- 
iintary,  ineffective,  298,  323 

Arbitration  Act,  first  compul- 
sory, and  its  effects,  299  ff.; 
H.  D.  Lloyd's  conclusions,  306; 
in  New  South  Wales,  308,  309; 
in  Western  Australia,  309;  dam- 
ages in,  3 1 3 ;   latest  word  on,  3 2 2 

Arbitration  Courts,  V.  S. 
Clark  on,  2 89  ff.,  309  ff.;  keep 
competition  lluid,  296;  in  Aus- 
tralasia, 296  ff.;  and  closed 
shop,  315;  and  freedom  of  the 
press,  316;  and  "the  obliga- 
tion of  contracts",  317;  and 
the  right  of  assembly,  317 ;  and 
trial  V)y  jury,  318 

Aristotle,  93;  created  vakic 
in  material  things,  103;  first 
systematic    writer    on    politics, 

Arkbridge,  Mayor,  of  Phila- 
delphia, cited,  422 

Arkwright,  Sir  Richard,  in- 
fluence exerted  by  his  loom,  345 

Armies  ]>r<)duce  value,  102 

Army  Outfitting,  etc.,  govern- 


ment its  own  customer,  228; 
private  initiative  essential  to 
variety,   228;    by    government, 

494^ 

Arnquist,  Judge,  and  anar- 
chism, 220 

Assignees,  200 

Assistance  of  poor:  see  rec- 
reations  AND   ASSIST.XNCE 

Asylums,  496 

Atkinson,  Edward,  on  taxa- 
tion, 531;    on  the  tariff,  550 

Attainder,  35 

Australasia,  laborers  restrict- 
ing work  in,  216;  the  "Para- 
dise of  Labor",  263;  unionists 
of,  263;  state  competition  with 
monopolies,  291;  fixing  of  mini- 
inum  wage,  292  ff . ;  sweating  in, 
292-294;  compulsory  arbitra- 
tion, 296  ff.;  taxation  in,  457; 
government  success  in  money- 
lending,  459;  utility  of  govern- 
ment ownership,  460;  "the 
government  stroke"  in,  461, 
470;  old-age  pensions  in,  500; 
separated  tax  and  single  tax  in, 
600 

Austro-Hungary,  suffrage  for 
city  officers  in,  484,  485 

Avebury,  Lord,  on  municipal 
trading,  44S,  454  «• 

Averages,  and  ability,  92; 
tend  to  rise,  327 

Backhouse,  Judge,  on  New 
Zealand  Arbitration  Act,  308 

Bacon,  Roger,  created  value 
in  material  things,  103 

Bad  Times:  see  hard  times 

Bailments,  181;  on  different 
kinds  of  goods,  181 ;  "  common 
carrier"  defined,  182;  limiting 
liability  without  contract,  182; 
Ijill-of-lading,  182;  hiring,  183; 
hmit  of  responsibility,  1S3; 
without  consideration,  184;  lia- 
bility of  innkeepers,  1 84 ;  pledge, 
185;  general  principle  of  lia- 
bility of  bailees,  186 


Index. 


635 


Baldwin,  Judge,  on  incorpo- 
rations, 121 

Ballot,  Australian,  4S4 ;  magic 
in,  629 

Baltimore,  revenue  from 
street-railway  franchises  in, 
takes  care  of  all  the  parks,  146, 
423,428;  rebuilding  of,  after  fire , 
238 

Bankers,  produce  value,  102, 
103  ;  control  policies  of  nations, 
363 

Banknotes,  essentials  of,  385 

Bankrupts,  assignees  of,  200; 
justice  of  discharging,  200 

Banks,  savings,  374,  498; 
need  of  small,  390;  effect  on 
politics  of  branch,  390;  taxation 

of,  390,  584 

Barbarian's  idea  of  liberty,  33 ; 
of  property  rights  in  land,  45 

Bargain  {sec  also  contract), 
152,  167 

Bargain-Stores,  94,  130 

Barter  and  money,  360 

Bastiat,  quoted,  326 

Baths,  public,  494 

Beef  Trust,  govemiuent  stiit 
against,  137 

Belgium,  labor  in,  90;  rate 
of  taxation  in,  531 

Bellamy,  Edward,  his  scheme, 
140 

Bell  Telephone  Co.  forced  out 
of   Massachusetts   by   taxation, 

569,  570 

Bemis,  Prof.,  on  municipal 
gas-plants,  439;  on  high  wages 
in  public  works,  445  n. 

Benevolence  {see  also  char- 
ity; wealth),  of  the  rich,  352; 
no  bar  to  accumulating  wealth, 

352 

Berlin,  regulation  of  adver- 
tising signs  in,  445;  electoral 
franchise  in,  486;  fire-insurance 
obligatory  in,  501 

Bets,  165;  President  Hadley 
on, 166 

Bill-of-Lading,  182 


Bill  of  Rights,  35 

Birmingham,  trust  of  bed- 
stead-makers of,  304 

Bonds  {see  also  stocks),  76, 
122 

Books,  nurnber  published  in 
civilized  countries,  414;  killed 
by  periodicals  in  the  U.  S., 
414 

Bookstores,  decrease  in,  in 
the  U.  S.,  414 

Boston,  school-books,  256; 
municipal  ferry  in,  395;  mu- 
nicipal ownership  of  street  rail- 
ways in,  422  ;  Public  Library  of, 
490;  parks  of,  491;  housing  the 
poor  in,  493  ;  personal-property 
tax  in, 580  n. 

Boycotts,  28,  104,  247  ff., 
410 «.;  Anti-Boycott  Associa- 
tion, 261 ;  and  Sherman  Anti- 
Trust  Act,  267  n.\  damages 
in,  277;  injunctions  against, 
280 

Brassey,  Thomas,  on  work 
and  wages,  89 

Breach  of  Trust,  200 

Bribery,  of  legislature,  140; 
remedies,  141;    of  agent,  192 

Bricklayers  and  use  of  con- 
crete, 246 

Bridges,  393 

Brooklyn,  personal-property 
tax  in,  5S0  n. 

Brooklyn  Bridge,  toll  on,  393 ; 
municipal  ownership  of  rail- 
way, 423 

Bryan,  W.  J.,  the  money 
question  and  followers  of,  359; 
favors  government  operation  of 
railways,  399 

Bunner,  H.  C,  cited,  92 

Bureaucracies  provided  by 
universal  suffrage,  456 

Burgomasters,  German,  478 

Burns,   John,   labor  logic   of, 

451 

Burns,  Robert,  cited,  519 
Burrows,    C.    W.,    on    postal 

policy,  414  «. 


636 


Index. 


California,  personal-property 
tax  in,  580  n.;  taxation  of 
mortgages  in,  609,  611 

Canada,  labor  in,  89;  banks 
in,  390;  railroads  built  by 
government  in,  408;  lumber 
kept  out  by  high  tariff,  532, 
548 

Capital  {see  also  ability; 
enterpriser;  wealth),  enter- 
priser raises,  95;  its  return 
more  like  labor's  than  ability's, 
106;  powerless  without  ability, 
107;  entitled  to  protection 
equally  with  wages,  116;  de- 
fined, 117;  needs  for  associa- 
ting, 120;  incorporating,  121; 
furnished  America  by  Europe- 
ans, 123;  effect  of  great  ag- 
gregations of,  on  legislation, 
140;  increase  in  wages  has 
come  largely  from,  339;  move- 
ment of,  influenced  by  taxa- 
tion, 532,  533 

Capitalism  and  socialism,  239 

Capital  Punishment,  172,  514, 

515 

Capital  Trusts,  13S,  254,  255 

'Captains  of  Industry",  38, 
103 

Carelessness,  a  wrong,  169; 
vast  American  wealth  and  good 
nature   promote,   482 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  on  hanging, 

515 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  and  the 
gateway  of  opportunity,  239; 
benefactions  of,  490 

Caveat  emptor,  179 

Cestui  que  trust,  200 

Chancery  Court,  47 

Charity  {see  also  housing  the 
poor;  recreations  and  as- 
sistance), 30,  350,351;  should 
be  reserved  for  emergencies,  30; 
should  help  poor  to  help  them- 
selves, 57;  impossible  under 
socialism,  226;  general  govern- 
ment production  attacks,  229; 
effective     only     where     wisely 


directed,  349;  communistic  and 
socialistic  idea  of,  349  ;  Charity 
Organization  Societies,  350,  499, 
520;  present  lines  enough,  350; 
good  only  for  those  unable  to 
work,  351;  education  of  the 
poor,  351;  province  of  the  law, 
352;  duty  of  the  rich,  354; 
corruption  of  voters  under 
guise  of,  483;  economy  and 
civilization  require,  495;  uni- 
versal sviffrage  as  affecting,  496 ; 
general  conchisions,  501 

Charles  I.,  principal  statute  of 
limitations  passed  during  reign 
of,  74 

Charles  II.,  principal  statute 
of  frauds  passed  during  reign  of, 
69 

Charters  for  railways,  404 

Chattel  Mortgages,  150 

Checks,  362;  not  a  legal  ten- 
der, 187 

Chicago,   site   of,    sold   for  a 
song,     59;      strikes    in,     261  «. 
labor  bureaus   in,    262 «.,   499 
Typothetaj    case    in,    270,    277 
street-railway  franchises  in,  422 
power  to  own  but  not  operate 
street  railways,  425;    gas-plant 
in,  438 

Children's  Courts,  510 

China,  labor  most  abundant 
in,  99;  primitive  society  in, 
153;  little  change  from  condi- 
tion of  status,  156 

Christ,  laws  of  Nature  enun- 
ciated by,  23,  114;  moral  atmo- 
sphere created  by,  an  essential 
of  material  well-being,  93 ; 
created  value  in  material  things, 
102;  and  the  motive  for  charity, 
502 

"Christian",  the  label,  239 

Cincinnati,  owns  a  railway, 
399;  revenue  from  street-rail- 
way franchises  in,  423,  428; 
personal  property  tax  in, 
580  n. 

Citizens' Associations,  324 


Index. 


637 


Citizens'  Industrial  Associa- 
tions, 245,  269 

City  Government  {sec  also 
municipalization;   suffrage), 

Civic  Relations,  all-important, 
I ;  defined,  4;  general  conclu- 
sions regarding,  624;  evolution 
of,  625 

Civics,  evolution  in,  vii;  de- 
fined, 4;  distinguished  from 
"political  relations",  4;  not  as 
exact  as  matliematics,  10; 
questions  determined  by  prices 
of  stocks,  123 

Civilization,  comes  from  work, 
26;  affected  by  land-tenure,  40, 
563 ;  proportion  of  private 
owners  increases  with,  5 1 ;  wotild 
retrograde  without  inventors 
and  organizers  of  industry,  99 ; 
of  Greece  and  Japan,  simplicity 
of,  100;  what  constitutes,  100; 
history  of,  an  overcoming  of 
disadvantages,  115;  affected 
by  contract,  152,  229;  mili- 
tarism declines  with  advance  of, 
156;  rapid  growtli  of  Japan  in, 
157;  wealth  essential  to,  157; 
affected  by  trade,  157;  by 
socialism,  158;  the  web  of,  242  ; 
"rich  richer  and  poor  poorer" 
not  true  under,  328;  consump- 
tion of  food  increasing  faster 
than  population  under,  333; 
consists  in  things  that  a  man 
can  do  without,  347;  wise 
philanthropy  necessary  to,  349; 
affected  by  money,  359  if.; 
by  roads,  391;  dangers  menac- 
ing American,  473;  affected  by 
charity,  495,  502;  government 
service  outside  of  monopolies 
detrimental  to,  528;  realty -tax 
incidental  to,  587  ;  evolution  of, 
625 

Civil-Service  Reform  a  remedy 
for  party  control  over  municipal 
ofifices,  478 

Civil  Suit  illustrated,  1 5 


Clark,  Victor  S.,  on  Austral- 
asian arbitration  courts,  289  ff., 
309  ff.;  on  Australasian  experi- 
ence with  mtmicipalization,  456 

Class  Legislation,  316 

Cleveland,  and  three-cent  fare, 
423  ;  gas  company  in,  438 

Cleveland,  President,  stops 
the  panic  of  '93,  374  ff. 

Closed  Shop,  250;  accidents 
and,  287;  arbitration  courts 
and,  3  1 5 

Cnut's  feudal  system,  47 

Coal-Mining  Business,  U.  S. 
government  in,  416;  New  Zea- 
land in,  459 

Coercion,  trade-union,  243  ff.; 
false  justifications  for,  247; 
threefold,  247  ff.;  striking,  248; 
conspiring  to  stop  work,  249; 
other  forms  of,  250;  no  magic 
in,  262  ;  law's  regulation  of,  263 

Coin,  currency  only  in,  inelas- 
tic and  extravagant,  383 

Colbert,  J.  B.,  his  theory  of 
taxation,  534,  559 

Collective  Bargaining,  254,  255 

Collectivism  and  individu- 
alism, 523 

Collectors  of  the  General  Capi- 
tal, 104 

Colorado,  eight-hour  law  in, 
284 

Combinations,  134 

Commercial  Paper,  150 

Commercial  Travelers,  128; 
improvements  effected  by,  128; 
vast  number  thrown  out  of 
work  b}^  trusts,  133 

Commissions,  desirability  of, 
467 

Common  Carriers,  182 

Communal  Land,  45 ;  deaden- 
ing influence  of,  in  India,  45 ;  in 
Russia,  45,  62 

Communism,  in  land,  45; 
contract  under,  155;  defined, 
219  ff. ;  $1,200  apiece,  221; 
necessarily  ephemeral,  222;   in- 


638 


Index. 


volves  robbery,  222;  wealth 
often  destroyed  when  divided, 
225;  against  Nature,  223  ;  char- 
ity under,  349 

Companies  (sec  also  corpora- 
tions), 125 

Competency,  laborers  retiring 
with  a,  327 

Competition,  39,  127;  hated 
by  the  lazy  and  stupid,  127  ;  in 
domestic  convenience,  127; 
benefits  illustrated,  127  fE.; 
in  locomotion,  128;  in  com- 
mercial traveling,  128;  effects 
industrial  revolution,  128;  ef- 
fects steadiness  of  business, 
129;  the  "life  of  trade",  129; 
evils,  130  ff.;  cooperation  and, 
131;  sometimes  wasteful,  131, 
132,  142,  549;  public  seldom 
gainer  by  wasteful,  131;  trusts 
a  remedy  for  wasteful,  132; 
consists  in  lowering  prices,  132; 
Professor  Cooley  on,  141; 
Charles  Scribner  cited,  142 ; 
socialism  against,  234;  equaliz- 
ing, 311;  stifled  by  "protec- 
tion", 377;  effect  of  govern- 
ment ownership  of  railroads  on, 
402 ;  effective  industiy  requires, 
526;    taxation  and,  537 

Concord,  Mass.,  boulevard  op- 
posed in,  393 

Conditional  Sale,   178 
Conduct,   good,   inspirers   of, 
create  value  in  material  things, 
102 

Conduits   for  water,  gas  and 
electricity,  443 
Confiscation,  251 
Confucius,    created    value    in 
material  things,  102 
Confusion,  170 

Connecticut,  increase  of  wages 
in,  330;  personal-property  tax 
in,  579  n. 

Consideration  (see  also  con- 
tract), under  statute  of  frauds, 
70;  defined,  159  ff.;  in  bail- 
ments, 184 


Conspiracy,  to  stop  work,  249 ; 
labor,  265  ff.;  law  of,  267  ff.; 
Judge  Harlan  on,  267 ;  Judge 
Knowlton  on,  268,  273;  U.  S. 
Supreme  Court  on,  268;  Daven- 
port on,  269;  district  attorneys' 
duty,  273;   Prof.  Seager  on,  274, 

275 

Constitution,   U.   S.,  not   the 

final  word  of  human  wisdom, 
viii;  Bill  of  Rights  in  the,  35; 
aiTiending,  478  ;  obstacle  to  bet- 
ter system  of  taxation  in,  623 
Constitutional  Law:  see  law 
Contract  (see  also  contracts 

FOR  PERSONAL  relations;  CON- 
TRACTS CONCERNING  PERSONAL 
property;    QUASI-CONTRACTUAL 

relations;  sale),  rights,  40; 
value  of  established  forms,  72; 
personal  property  the  great 
field  of,  151;  rights  of,  dis- 
tinguished from  property  rights, 
152;  as  an  element  in  civiliza- 
tion, 152  if.;  definition,  152; 
possible  only  to  the  free,  153; 
an  education  in  freedom,  153; 
only  able  employers  can  secure 
labor  under,  154;  status  versus 
contract,  154,  158,  317;  freedom 
and  private  property  evolve 
with,  155;  Morriscy  On  contract- 
breakers,  158;  law  of  rights 
under,  1 59  ff . ;  essentials  of,  1 59  ; 
illustrations,  160;  natural  love 
and  affection,  160 ;  promises  and 
contracts,  161;  fictional,  163; 
mutuality,  163;  three  points 
necessary  to,  163-165;  law  and 
religion,  164;  justice  and  honor, 
165;  what  contracts  not  en- 
forceable, 165  ff.;  law  imposes 
self-prcscrA'ation,  166;  con- 
tracts which  the  law  assumes, 
167;  estoppel,  16S;  carelessness 
and  fraud,  169;  statutes  of 
limitations,  169;  force  vitiates, 
170;  waste  through  dishonesty, 
170;  when  parties  do  not  meet, 
171;    law  docs  not  require  im- 


Index. 


639 


possibilities,  183;  remediec  for 
broken,  198;  principal  kinds  of, 
198;  general  government  pro- 
duction attacks,  229;  obliga- 
tion of,  317;  Australasian  arbi- 
tral ion  attacks,  317;  may  some- 
times work  injustice,  319 

Contract  Labor,  284 

Contracts  concerning  Personal 
Property,  law  of,  173  ff.;  sale 
and  delivery,  173;  possession 
and  ownership,  175;  no  one 
can  sell  more  title  than  he  has, 
175;  owner  must  not  secure 
possession  by  force,  176;  de- 
livery and  acceptance  com- 
plete ownership,  177;  condi- 
tional sale,  1 78;  option,  178; 
when  defects  must  be  disclosed, 
179;  warranty,  179;  surety- 
ship, 180;  insurance,  180;  bail- 
ments, 181;  tender,  186;  con- 
tractual disabilities,  187;  some 
limits  of  quantum  vaLbat,  188; 
the  law  protects  the  weak,  189; 
verbal,  in  Wall  Street,  342 

Contracts  for  Personal  Rela- 
tions, law  of,  190  fE.;  agency, 
190;  partnership,  195;  service, 
196;   reinedies  for  broken,  198 

Convenience,  promotion  of,  a 
function     of     government       6, 

357  ff. 

Cooley,  Prof.,  on  competition, 
141 

Cooper,  Peter,  his  fortune  in 
accord  with  Nature's  laws,  114; 
his  rise,  155,  158 

Cooperation  and  competition, 

131 
Cooperative  Enterprises,   107, 

113 

Corporations,  121;  rapid  new 
development  of,  in  the  U.  S., 
50;  liability,  121;  perpetuity, 
122;  stocks  and  bonds,  122; 
cheapen  product,  124;  not  all 
owned  by  the  rich,  124;  irre- 
sponsibility, 125;  small  ones 
undesirable,   125;    great  indus- 


tries mostly  controlled  by,  126; 
hated  by  labor,  126;  overtaxed, 
126;  danger  of  monopoly,  126; 
state  control,  136;  made  by 
the  state,  138;  corruption  funds 
of,  140;  effect  of  personal- 
property  tax  on,  5S3;  cause  of 
prejudice,  584;  taxation  of  fran- 
chise and  non-franchise,  584 

Corruption  funds  {see  also 
monopolies;  municipal  dif- 
ficulties; protection;  pub- 
lic works;  pull;  taxation; 
trusts),  140  ff. 

Cotton-Gin,  industrial  change 
effected  by,  345 

Cotton-Spinners,  increased 
wages  of,  330 

County  Government,  10,  16 

Courtesy  and  Dower,  72,  201 
ff.  ' 

Courts  under  local,  state  and 
national  governments,  15  ff.: 
needed  against  ignorance  as 
well  as  against  fraud,  170; 
probate,  206 ;  supervising  trus- 
tees,   207;     children's,    510 

Cox,  Horace,  on  eight-hour 
day,  338 

Creosote  and  Scotch  whiskey, 
539 

Crime  and  pauperism  among 
children  of  divorced  parents,  2 

Criminals  {see  also  defec- 
tives), generally  poor,  342, 
509;  generally  defective,  509; 
one  wrong  step  does  not  dem- 
onstrate a  criminal,  510;  the 
indeterminate  sentence,  510 
511;  most  criminals  insane,  511; 
cheaper  to  keep  rounders  per- 
manently, 511;  habitual,  512; 
prison  labor,  512;  capital  pun- 
ishment, 514;  life-term  pris- 
oners, 515;  taxation  for  main- 
tenance of  idle  prisoners,  536 

Criminal  Suit  illustrated,  16 

Currency:  see  money;  paper 
money 

Customs:   see  tariff  duties 


640 


Index. 


Cutler,  Mayor,  of  Rochester, 
on  need  of  government  inspec- 
tion of  street  railways,  422 

Dalrymple, ,  of  Glasgow, 

on  municipal  operation  in 
America,  424 

Damages,  for  trespass,  68; 
for  broken  contracts,  198;  in 
strikes  and  boycotts,  277,  278, 
301;    in  arbitration  law,  313 

Daniels,  Prof.,  on  railroads, 
396    ff.;     on    municipalization, 

445,  447,  464 

Darwin,  Major  Leonard,  on 
municipal  trading,  442,  447,  448 

Davenport,  Daniel,  on  con- 
spiracy, 269 

Death-Penalty:     see    capital 

PUNISHMENT 

Debs,  E.  v.,  cited,  297 
Debts,  city,  Lecky  on,  469 
Deeds,   70;    seal  on,   71;    es- 
sentials   of,    71;     value    of    es- 
tablished forms  of ,  7  2  ;    delivery 
of,  76;  fraud  in,  78 

Defectives  {see  also  crimi- 
nals), 349,  507  ff.;  trustees  for, 
207  ;  the  persistently  poor,  507  ; 
the  insane,  508 ;  the  criminal, 
509;  euthanasia,  513;  educa- 
tion the  only  remedy,  514;  capi- 
tal punishment,  514;  the  young, 

Delivery  and  Acceptance,  177 

Demand  and  Supply,  129;  in 
labor,  244 

Democracy,  on  trial  in  muni- 
cipal operation,  465;  para- 
doxes of,  478;  relations  of,  and 
lafssrz-faJT'',  489 

Denmark,  old-age  pensions  in. 

Depression,  business,  of  1903- 

4,   i,S4 

Derby,  Earl,  on  indirect  taxes, 

558  w. 

Derrick,  Mrs.,  "Crime"  of, 
2io  n. 

Detroit,  municipal  ownership 


of  street  railways  in,  423;  elec- 
tricity in,  440 

Dewey,  Admiral,  as  an  enter- 
priser, 96 

Dingley,  N.,  and  the  Spanish- 
war  tax,  554  12. 

Dingley  Act  and  Europe,  543 

Direct  Taxes  {see  also  income- 
tax;  inheritance-taxes;  per- 
sonal-property tax;  realty- 
taxes;  taxation),  534,  562  ff.; 
inquisitorial,  562  ff.,  573  ff.; 
income-tax,  563  ff. ;  inheritance- 
taxes,  571;  personal-property 
taxes,  573  ff.;  obvious,  5S6  ff.; 
realty-taxes,  5S6  ff. 

Disease,  good  restilting  from, 
115;  statutes  protecting  com- 
munity from,  288 

Dishonesty  responsible  for  bad 
government,  7 

Disraeli,  on  income-tax,  571 

Distribution,  paradoxes  of, 
103 

Dividends,  curmilative,  122; 
limiting,  139 

Divorce,  its  effect  on  children, 
2 

Docks,  396 

Domesday  Book,  48,  73 

Donald,  Robert,  on  municipal 
trading,  454  n. 

Donnelly  Act,  138 

Double  Taxation  {see  also 
mortgages),  565,  608  ff.;  of 
mortgages,  608;  tax  liens  and 
deduct  from  valuation ,  613;  re- 
sult of  excises,  613 

Dower  and  Courtesy,  72,  201 
ff. 

Drummers:  see  commercial 
trav?:lers 

Duluth,  water  and  gas  in, 
440 

Dunne,  Mayor,  and  Chicago 
street  railways,  424 

Duties:     see  rights;    tariff 

DUTIES 

Dwellings  for  the  poor  {see  also 
housing  the  poor),  491 


Index. 


6ai 


Easton,  Pa.,  electricity  in,  440; 
Majror  March  on,  440;  D.  W. 
Nevin  on,  441 

Economics,  bad,  destruction 
in,  102 

Edinburgh,  hospitals  in,  497 
Edison,  Thomas  A.,  cited,  93 
Education   {see  also   recrea- 
tions     AND       assistance),     tllC 

poor  helped  by,  350;  leisure 
classes  should  promote,  355; 
local  versus  state  control,  480 ; 
state  and  private,  517  ff.; 
illiterate  voters,  518;  in  Ger- 
many, 518;  usable  and  un- 
usable, 518;  what  is  needed, 
518;  policy  of  European  cities, 
519;  practical,  not  foe  to 
poetry,  519;  pauperization 
through,  519;  "school-treasu- 
ries" in  France,  520;  state's 
responsibility,  520;  parents' 
duty,  520;  elementary,  in  Eng- 
land, 521;  in  Holland,  521;  the 
higher,  521;  political  pulls  in, 
522;  state  universities  versus 
private,  522  ;  the  great  hope  for 
the  future,  623 

Eight-hour  Day  (see  also  work- 
day, shorter),  336  ff.;  in  Utah 
and  Colorado,  284;  Supreme 
Court  and,  284;  John  Rae  on, 
337 ;  Horace  Cox  and  Sidney 
Webb  on,  338;  effect  on  cigar- 
makers,  339 

Ejectment,  68 

Electoral  Franchise:  see  suf- 
frage; UNIVERSAL  suffrage; 
VOTERS    ■ 

Electricity,  municipalization 
of,  440;  versus  gas,  442  ;  plants 
in   England,  Germany  and   the 

U.S.,  453 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  on  the  dis- 
tribution of  wealth,  356 

Eminent  Domain,  64;  in 
monopoly  abuses,  139;  at  Ni- 
agara Falls,  139;  under  com- 
munism, 222;  under  socialism, 
230;    clearing  slums  under,  492 


Employees  {see  also  labor; 
railroads;  service), rights  and 
duties  of,  28,  196  ff.;  accident 
insurance  of  German,  30,  500; 
power  to  contract,  154;  in- 
crease in,  339 

Employers,  rights  and  duties 
of,  28,  196  ff.;  often  pay  too 
high  wages,  100;  competition 
among,  154;  coercing  of,  248  ff.; 
associations  of,  260  ff. 

Endorsement,   148  ff.,   161 

England,  Poor  Law  in,  29, 
230,  231;  laborers  in,  89,  no; 
churls  and  villeins  of,  154; 
w.ges  in,  221,  332;  increase  of 
estates  in,  subject  to  succession 
tax,  331;  improved  condition 
of  working  classes  in,  331  w.; 
paupers  in  (London),  332;  pos- 
tal savings-banks,  332  n.,  498; 
roads  in,  392  ;  government  ferry 
at  Woolwich,  395;  railroads  in, 
397,  401;  municipal  gas-plants 
in,  435;  opposition  to  municipal 
trading  in,  469  ff.;  suffrage  for 
city  officers  in,  484,  4S5;  labor 
bureaus  in,  499 ;  rate  of  taxation 
in,  531  ;  free  trade  in,  549;  waste- 
fulness of  taxation  in,  558  w.; 
division  of  incomes  in,  567; 
income-tax  in,  571;  multiple 
voting  in,  595;  rental- value  tax 
in,  606;    taxes  luxuries  mainly, 

615 

"Enrichment",  188 

Ensley,  Enoch,  (quoted  by 
Wells,)  on  taxation  of  movable 
property,  577 

Enterpriser  {see  also  ability; 
capital;  wealth),  and  wage- 
earners,  92,  103;  defined,  94; 
prophesies  wants,  95;  raises 
capital,  95;  at  the  works,  95; 
outside  the  works,  95;  popular 
view  of  the,  95  ;  effects  division 
of  labor,  96;  often  fails,  97; 
J.  H.  Walker  quoted,  97  w.; 
his  income  not  at  expense  of 
labor,     98;      must     pay     good 


642 


Index. 


wages,  loo-i;  fallacy  that  he 
produces  nothhig,  10 1 ;  rates  of 
division  of  product,  107;  gen- 
erally gets  less  than  nothing, 
108;  Mayo-Smith  quoted,  340 

Entrepreneur:  see  enter- 
priser 

Equilibration,  law  of,  327 

Equity  of  Redemption,  76, 
611,  612 

Erie  Canal,  wages  of  laborers 
on,  330 

Escrow,  75 

Estate  {see  also  real  prop- 
erty), life,  72,  80;  technical 
meaning  of,  in  land,  78;  restric- 
tions, 83;   in  personal  property, 

150 

Estates  at  Will,  80 

Estates  for  Years,  78,  79;  re- 
pairs, 7q;  subletting,  80;  ter- 
minability,  80;   notice.  So 

Estoppel,  168 

Euclid,  93 

Euthanasia,  513 

Evils  have  their  uses,  114 

Evolution,  in  civics,  vii  ff . ; 
of  property  rights,  42;  of 
hereditary  feudal  relations,  47 ; 
of  private  ownership,  48;  of 
rights  in  personal  property, 
87  ft.;  invention  and,  98;  a 
question  of,  no;  simultaneous 
in  freedom,  private  property 
and  contract,  155;  the  law  is 
an,  171;  of  road-making,  392; 
single  tax  an,  600;  of  taxation, 
617  ff.;  of  civilization,  625;  of 
government,  628;  not  all  nega- 
tive, 629 

Exchange,  right  of,  adds  to 
value,  40 

Excise,  539;  secret  stills,  539; 
objections,  540;  may  limit 
dangerous  pursuits,  540;  more 
than  twice  as  good  a  tax  as 
the  tariff,  556;  multiplies  tax- 
ation, 613 

Executive,  13 

Executors,  202 


Experts,  ideal  government  will 
consist  of  bodies  of,  624 
Ex  post  facto  Laws,  35 
Express     Service,     412;      by 
European  post-offices,  415 

Failures,  J.  H.  Walker  on,  97  «. 

Fares,  low,  Mayor  Johnson 
and,  424;  how  to  secure,  429; 
in  Columbus,  Rockford  and 
Cleveland,  429;  in  Germany, 
528;   zone,  in  Glasgow,  429 

Farm  Colonies,  53 

Farming,  dearth  of  laborers, 
54;  needs  ability,  55;  machin- 
ery in,  344 

Farms,  abandoned,  54 

Federal  Salt  Co.,  government 
suit  against,  137 

Fee  Simple,  78,  5S7,  611 

Ferries,  395 

Feudal  System,  46,  153;  ad- 
vance on  communism,  46;  in 
the  Saxon  kingdoms,  46;  under 
Cnut,  46;  guardianship,  47; 
disposal  in  marriage,  47  ;  under 
William  the  Conqueror,  47; 
Domesday  Book,  48;  evolu- 
tion of  private  ownership  under, 
48  ff.;  scutagc,  48;  leases  for 
labor,  48;  money  commuta- 
tion of  labor  leases,  48 ;  con- 
tract under,  155  ff. 

Fiat  Money,  364 

Fiction  in  Law,  163 

Fiduciary  defined,   199 

Finance,  incorrect  principles 
of,  destroy  value,   102 

Folk,  Governor,  quoted,  399 

Food,  increase  in  price  of,  335 

Forgiveness  a  law  of  Nature, 

23 

Fortune  {see also  wealth),  ex- 
amples of  change  of,  97  w., 
209 «.,  348  n.;  inequality  of, 
113;  right  use  of,  113  ;  excessive 
fortunes,  204  n. 

France,  public  workshops  of, 
29,  30,  500;  land  laws  in,  51; 
labor  in,  90;    increase  in  wages 


Index. 


643 


i",  333;  roads  in,  393;  rail- 
roads in,  397;  stii^rage  in,  486; 
theatre  in,  490;  housing  the 
poor  in,  493;  "  school-treasti- 
ries"  in,  520;  rate  of  taxation 
in,  531;  levies  retaliatory  duty 
on  Italian  silk  and  cottonseed- 
oil  and  bacon,  542,  543;  pro- 
tectionism, in,  549;  wasteful- 
ness of  taxation  in,  558  «. 

Franchise,  Electoral,  {see  also 
suffrage;  universal  suf- 
frage;    VOTERS,)    473   lY. 

Franchises,  145;  seized  by 
politicians,  145;  should  not  be 
sold  otitright,  146;  value  of, 
in  Baltimore,  146;  operation, 
ownership,  regttlation,  394;  in- 
ci-ement  in,  394,  428;  of  ferries, 
395;  taxation  of,  404,  584; 
government  control  of  private 
operation  of,  409 ;  Prof.  Adams 
on,  410  n.;  in  Chicago,  422 ;  too 
short,  452 

Franchise-Tax  {see  also  real- 
ty-taxes), 606  ff. 

Frauds,  statute  of,  6g;  in 
land  transfer,  78,  84;  in  con- 
tracts, 169;  never  defined,  169; 
in  consideration,  173,  174 

Free  assembly,  etc.:  see  lib- 
erty 

Freedom  {see  also  liberty), 
contract  and  private  property 
evolve  together  with,  155;  so- 
cialism would  destroy,  231 

Freedom  of  the  Press  {see  also 
liberty)  curtailed  by  arbitra- 
tion courts,  316 

Free-Food  Depots,  31 

Galton  and  the  law  of  aver- 
ages, 02,  93,  327 

Garfield,  J.  A.,  rise  of,  155 

Gas,  435;  craA'cs  municipali- 
zation less  than  water,  43  5 ; 
cheapened  by  it  in  some  places, 
436 

Gautama,  moral  atmosphere 
created  by,  an  essential  of  mate- 


rial well-being.  93 ;  created 
value  in  material  things,  102 

Genghis  Khan  and  the  com- 
iTiunal  system,  154,  155 

George,  Henry,  theories  of  fol- 
lowers of,  58,  563;  advocates 
single  tax,   595,  621 

Georgia,  personal-property 
tax  in,  580  n. 

Germany,  employees'  acci- 
dent insurance  in,  -so,  c;oo; 
labor  m,  90 ;  income-tax  statis- 
tics of,  333;  new  money  sys- 
tem in,  368;  government  fer- 
ries in,  395;  railroads  in,  397; 
municipal  gas-plants  in,  435; 
extension  of  street  lighting  in, 
435;  burgomasters  in,  47S; 
suffrage  for  city  officers  in,  484, 
485;  vote  of  taxpayers  in,  486; 
runs  theatres  well,  490;  hous- 
ing the  poor  in,  493 ;  labor 
bureaus  in,  499;  old-age  pen- 
sions in,  500 ;  unusable  educa- 
tion in,  51S;  protectionism  in, 
549;    income-tax  in,  571 

Giffen,  Sir  Robert,  on  wages, 

331 

Gladstone  on  income-tax,  571 

Glasgow,  failure  of  Bank, 
122;  municipal  ferries  in,  395; 
docks  in,  396;  report  of  tram- 
ways, 425;  municipal  gas-plants 
in,  436;  extension  of  street 
lighting  in,  436;  railway  facili- 
ties and  fares  in,  449;  objec- 
tion to  municipal  trading  in, 
454 «.;  housing  the  poor  in, 
493;  pttblic  wash-houses  in, 
495;  lodging-houses  in,  497,  498 

Glass-Blowers,  making  work 
for,  217 

Gluts  (in  manuf acttires) ,  546, 
550 

Godkin,  E.  L.,  as  a  citizen, 
355;  on  division  of  English 
incomes,  567;  favored  aboli- 
tion of  legislatures,  625 

Golden  Rule  a  law  of  Nature, 
23 


644 


Index. 


Gompers,  Samuel,  anti-in- 
junction  bill  advocated  by, 
282;    his  "fight",  297,  324 

Goodnow,  Prof.,  on  reform,  in 
municipal  politics,  478;  on 
separation  of  state  and  local 
functions,  479 

"Goods"  not  all  material 
things,    loS 

Government  {see  also  mu- 
nicipal difficulties;  munici- 
palization), general  functions 
of,  5  ff.,  8;  illustrated,  5; 
classified,  5;  results  of  bad,  6; 
responsibility  for  bad,  7;  good, 
requires  effort,  7 ;  geographical 
divisions,  9  ff.;  departments, 
13  ff.;  sources,  14;  protects 
workingmen,  28;  landowners 
best  guardians  of,  52;  produces 
value,  102;  control  of  trusts 
and  monopolies,  136;  danger  of 
tyranny,  139;  production  by, 
attacks  variety,  228;  and  pri- 
vate property  and  contract  and 
charity,  229;  by  injunction, 
281;  honesty  of,  affects  prices, 
343;  aid  to  deserving  poor,  351 ; 
in  manufacturing  and  banking 
business,  375,  385  ;  notes,  objec- 
tions to,  382;  may  pass  law 
impairing  obligation  of  con- 
tracts, 403;  railroads  managed 
by,  406  ff.;  railroad  vote  in, 
408;  municipalization,  451,  524 
ff . ;  production  by,  attacks  initi- 
ative, 451,  470;  state  functions 
and  city  functions,  479;  army 
outfitting,  etc.,  by,  494;  admin- 
isters charities  poorly,  495;  and 
the  death -penalty,  513,  514;  in 
education,  520;  proper  sphere 
of,  523  ff.;  individualism  and 
collectivism,  523;  cost  of,  in 
different  countries,  531;  sta- 
bility influenced  by  methods  of 
taxation,  532;  indirect  taxes 
prevent  criticism  of,  558;  cost 
of,  per  person  in  U.  S.,  558; 
affects  real-estate  values,   591; 


ideal,  624;  vices  in  evolution 
of,  62 8 

"Government Stroke "  in  Aus- 
tralasia, 461,  470 

Graft,  and  socialism,  23S;  cor- 
poration and  political,  405,  492  ; 
in  London,  421 

Great  Britain,  gas  consumed 
in,  439;  street  railways,  electric 
lights,  and  telephones  in,  as 
compared  with  the  U.  S.,  449; 
municipal  gas-plants  in,  452 

' '  Greatest  Happiness ' '  Prin- 
ciple, 22,  27,  63,  64,  113,  204, 
247,  270 

' ' Great  Industry  " :  see  in- 
dustry 

Greece,  simplicity  of  civiliza- 
tion of,  1 00 ;  busy  with  her  past, 
518 

Greed  and  socialism,  238 

Greenback  Currency  of  Civil 
War  destroyed  values,  102,  366, 
3 78;    versus  gold,  365 

Gresham's  Law,  386 

Grosvenor, W .  M . ,  on  prices,  3  2  9 

Guardianship,  feudal,  47  ;  at 
present,  206 

Habeas  Corpus,  37 

Habitation  Tax  {see  also  ren- 
tal-value tax),  610 

Hadley,  President,  on  betting, 
166;  on  improvements  in  rail- 
roads and  telegraphs,  470 

Hahnemann  and  the  homc- 
opathists,  232 

Hamburg,  docks  in,  396;  gas- 
plants  in,  435 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  revenue 
tariff  of,  544 

Hamilton,  O.,  lighting  plants 
in,  438 

Handworkers,  claims  for,  90, 
95,  108 _ 

Happiness    {see  also   pursuit 

OF     happiness),     principle     of 

greatest    22,27;  state's  relation 

to,  41 ;  not  dependent  on  wealth, 

I  348;  causes  of,  628 


Index. 


645 


Hard  Times,  forehandedness 
against,  346;  effect  of,  on 
prices,  346 

Harlan,  Justice,  on  con- 
spiracy, 267 

Head,  Mayor,  of  Nashville, 
and  street-railway  companies, 
427;  experience  with  gas  and 
electricity,  441 

Hearst,  W.  R.,  and  municipal 
ownership,  395 

Help:  x€c  charity;  housing 
THE    poor;     recreations    and 

ASSISTANCE 

Helpless:  see  defectives 
Henry,  Patrick,  cited,  519 
Henry    II.,    scutage    imposed 

by,  48, 587 

Henry  VIII.,  regard  for  hu- 
man life  in  time  of,  172 

High   Prices    and   palliatives, 

314 

Hildebrand  and  the  feudal 
system,  155 

Hill,  John  A.,  and  printing 
strike,  88 

Hiring,  183 

Holland,  suffrage  for  city 
officers  in,  484 

Home,  importance  of  the,  2 ; 
right  to  a,  53 

Honesty,  raises  wages  and 
credit,  341;  lowers  prices,  342; 
of  government  affects  prices,  343 

Honor  and  justice,  161,  165 

Hospitals,  496 

Hotels  improved  by  com- 
mercial travelers,  129 

Hours  of  Labor  {see  also 
work-day),  329 

House-Building,  493,  494 

Housing  the  Poor,  491  ff.; 
community  should  regulate  it  in 
self-defence,  494 ;  but  not  neces- 
sarily undertake  it,  494 

Idiots  vote  in  New  York, 
486  n. 

Idleness,  insurance  against, 
500 


Ignorance  responsible  for  bad 
government,  7 

Illinois,  labor  bureaus  in,  500; 
personal-property  tax  in,  581  n. 

"Imperialism"  and  politics, 
476 

Improvements,  land  occupi- 
er's rights  in,  60;  should  be 
voted  on  by  taxpayers  only, 
484  ff. 

Incapables  {see  also  defec- 
tives), 349 

Incomes,  statistics  of  British, 

ZZ^  «■ 

Income-Tax,  impossibilities 
not  required  by  law,  183  ;  Prus- 
sian statistics  of,  m''  de- 
clared unconstitutional  by  Su- 
preme Court,  553,  570;  defined, 
563;  falls  only  on  successes  and 
active  property,  563;  propor- 
tioned to  ability,  563 ;  pre- 
mium on  lying,  564;  violates 
rights  of  privacy,  565;  gener- 
ally doubles  taxation,  565;  as 
illustrating  progressive  taxa- 
tion, 565;  discrimination  of 
sources,  566;  as  equalizing  for- 
tunes, 566;  progressive,  566; 
as  offsetting  injustice  in  other 
taxes,  567;  out  of  proportion 
to  state's  services,  567;  taxa- 
tion versus  benevolence,  568; 
taxing  away  business  and  benev- 
clence,  569;  characteristic  of 
militarism,  570;  heaviest  on 
those  least  able  to  bear  it, 
570;  and  social  war,  570;  ap- 
proved only  as  a  necessity,  571 ; 
Gladstone  and  Disraeli  on,  571 

Increment:  see  unearned 
increment 

Independence,  civilized  man 
loses  the  savage's,  91 

India,  communal  land  in,  45; 
labor  in,  89,  99;  primitive 
society  in,  153;  little  change 
from  condition  of  status  in,  156 

Indirect  Taxes  {sec  also  tariff 
duties;    excise;    stamp-taxes; 


646 


Index. 


TAXATION),  534,  539  ff.,  556  ff.; 
excise,  539;  duties,  541 ;  stamp- 
taxes,  553;  general  conclusions 
on,  556  fif.;  wasteful,  556;  hard 
on  the  poor,  556;  corrupt  legis- 
lation, 557;  prevent  criticism 
of  government,  558;  why  popu- 
lar, 559;  summary  for  and 
against,  561;  poor  substitutes 
for,  616;  how  England  uses 
them,  616 

Individual,  society's  control 
of  the,  I  ff.;    liberty  of  the,  28S 

Individualism,  all  the  progress 
of  mankind  made  under,  232, 
235;  socialism  and,  232;  uni- 
versal suffrage  implies,  488;  and 
collectivism,  523 

Industrial  Associations,  324 

Industrial  Regulation  pro- 
motes centralization  of  indus- 
try, 312 

Industries,  politicians  run- 
ning, 140;  government  control 
of,  416  ff. 

Industry,  the  Great,  cheapens 
product,  98;  early  days  of, 
,106;  essentials  of,  117;  de- 
velo|)ed  by  corporations,  123; 
economies  of,  133-135;  venal 
legislation  and,  140;  intro- 
duced by  steam,  345;  effect  on 
labor,  345;  on  economic  doc- 
trine, 345;  requires  competition, 
526;  as  affected  by  taxation, 
532 

Inheritance-Taxes,  571;  col- 
lateral, 572;  livening  Post 
quoted,  572 

Initiative,  private,  essential 
to  variety,  228 

Injunction,  Anti-Injunction 
Bill,  261  n.;  against  boycotts, 
280;  judge's  power  to  punish 
under,  280;  government  by, 
281 

Injuries  {see  also  accidents), 
protecting  laborers  against,  287 

Injustice,  citizen's  duty  to 
fight,  196 


Innkeepers  as  bailees,  185 

Inquisitorial  Taxes  (see  also 
DIRECT  taxes),  562  ff . ;  in- 
tolerable, 616 

Insane,  care  of,  508 ;  criminals, 
509  ff. 

Insurance  of  employees 
against  loss  of  work  and  acci- 
dent, 30,  500;  in  general,  180; 
against  idleness  of  old  age,  500 

Insurance  Companies,  officers 
of,  103;  and  San  Francisco 
earthquake,  236,  339 

Intelligence,  growth  of,  115 

Interest  {see  also  usury), 
defined,  118;  legal  rate  of,  118; 
law  in  New  York  regarding,  119; 
reduction  of,  339 

Interstate  Commerce  Act, 
Prof.  vSeager's  suinmary  of,  405 

Intestates,  devolution  of  es- 
tates of,  201 ;  rights  of  relatives 
of,  201 

Invention  and  evokition,  98 

Inventor  reaps  only  small 
proportion  of  his  production,  88 ; 
defined,  98 

Investment,  unwise,  121 

Ireland,  labor  in,  69;  secret 
stills  in,  539 

Italy,  beggars  in,  349;  rail- 
roads in,  397,  407;  suffrage  for 
city  officers  in,  484,  485;  old- 
age  pensions  in,  501;  rate  of 
taxation  in,  531;  levies  high 
duty  on  French  wines,  542 ; 
protectionism  in,  549;  income- 
tax  in,  570 

Jacksonville,  Fla.,  electricity 
in,  440;  and  the  Australian 
ballot,  4S4 

James  II.,  regard  for  human 
life  in  time  of,   172 

Japan,  simplicity  of  civiliza- 
tion of,  100;  inilitarism  in, 
157"'  great  advancement  of, 
157 

Jersey  City,  personal-property 
tax  in,  580  n. 


Index. 


647 


Jevons,  W.  S.,  on  shorter 
work-day,  338 

Johnson,  Mayor  Tom,  and 
three-cent  fare,  424 

Joint  Traffic  Association,  137 

Judgments,  74 

Judiciary  {see  also  courts), 
13  ff. 

Jury,  trial  by,  Australasian 
arbitration  attacks,  318;  pos- 
sibly now  outgrown,  319 

Kansas  tries  a  new  way  of 
"bleeding",  374 

Kansas  City,  conduits  for 
wires  in,  444 

Keane,  Archbishop,  on  slight- 
ing of  work,  216 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  cited,  519 

Kitchens,  pviblic,  30 

Knowlton,  Jvidge,  on  conspir- 
acy, 268,  273 

Label,  union,  255;  and  Bos- 
ton school-books,  256 

Labor  {see  also  ability;  capi- 
tal; enterpriser;  labor- 
saving  machinery;  labor 
trusts;  scamping  work;  trade- 
unions;  wages;  work),  in 
production,  42,  87,  89;  Brassey 
on,  89;  in  various  countries 
compared,  89;  Italian  versus 
negro,  in  the  U.  S.,  89;  con- 
flict between  ability  and,  90; 
enterpriser  regulates  division 
of,  96;  enterpriser's  income 
not  at  expense  of,  98;  abounds 
in  poorest  countries,  99;  re- 
turns of,  nearly  fixed,  104; 
powerless  without  ability,  107; 
rates  of  division  of  product, 
107;  hates  corporations,  126; 
evil  effects  of  scamping,  209  fif . ; 
piecework,  213;  pretending  and 
forbidding,  214;  Thornton  cited, 
214;  in  Australasia,  216;  de- 
struction as  an  aid  to  produc- 
tion, 217;  as  affected  by  com- 
munism, 220  ff. ;    by  socialism,  I 


230;  a  corner  of  supply  of,  243, 
269;  demand  and  supply  in, 
244;  coercing  the  laborer,  253 
ff.;  and  the  law,  265  ff. ;  Par- 
liament and,  270,  277;  Prof. 
Adams  and  Prof.  Seager  on 
labor  laws,  283;  protecting 
laborer  against  himself,  284; 
against  accidents,  2 87;  laborers 
retiring  with  a  competency, 
327;  hours  of,  329;  rise  in 
wages,  decrease  in  hours,  335; 
increasing  ability  of,  340 ;  effect 
of  machinery  on,  344;  under 
government  ownership  of  rail- 
roads, 408 ;  labor  logic  of  John 
Btims,  451;  in  English  mu- 
nicipalities, 454;  municipal, 
470;  prison,  512;  aggressions, 
627 

Labor  Bureaus,  261  n.,  350 
499 

Labor-Contract,  violation  of 
278 

Laborers:  see  employees; 
labor 

Labor  Question  {see  also  la- 
bor), the  leading  question  of 
the  time,  iv ;  a  real  struggle  ,627 

Labor-Saving  Machinery, 
strikes  against,  270;  increases 
production,  336;  creates  and 
supplies  new  wants,  343  ff.; 
effect  on  econoiTiic  doctrine, 
345;  attitude  of  workmen  to- 
ward, 346;  as  many  producers 
needed  with  as  without,  346; 
product   cheapened   by,    346 

Labor  Trusts  {see  also  tradk- 

UNIONS),  138,  254  ff.,  283,  551, 
626 

•'  Labor  Vote  ".  the,  407,  454 
Laissez-faire,  democracy  and 

488,  4S9 

Land     {see     also     communal 

land;    farm  colonies;    farms; 

FEUDAL   system;     LANDOWNERS; 

land-tenure;  private  prop- 
erty; real  property;  un- 
earned     increment),      source 


648 


Index. 


of  raw  material,  44;  evolution 
of  private  ownership,  48;  wide 
dissemination  of  private  own- 
ership in  America  and  France, 
51  «.,  52  ;  advantages  of  private 
ownership  exaggerated,  52  ff.; 
people  who  clamor  for  every- 
body having  it  will  not  go  to 
it,  53,  54;  many  of  the  rich 
have  little  or  none,  54,  57; 
valuable  only  to  able  men,  55; 
proposed  reversion  to  govern- 
ment ownership,  55 ;  government 
taking,  by  robbery,  56;  "un- 
earned increment",  57  ff.;  du- 
ties of  ownership  breed  rights, 
59;  increases  in  value  with 
growth  of  population,  60 ;  rent, 
60,  118;  importance  of  private 
property  in,  62;  rights  in, 
limited,  63;  the  source  of  all 
other  property,  68;  as  capital, 
117;  not  a  monopoly,  144; 
agricultural,  at  a  disadvantage 
under  single  tax,  597;  sepa- 
rated tax  on,  exclusive  of  im- 
provements, 601;  bmldings  dif- 
fuse taxes  more  readily  than, 
602 

Landowners,  number  of,  in- 
creases with  civilization^  5 1 ; 
best  guardians  of  government, 
52;  most  thrifty  citizens,  52; 
pay  most  of  the  taxes,  56; 
robbery  of  present,  advocated, 
56;    taxes  no  hardship  to,  620 

Land-Tax,  mark  of  liberty  and 
progress,  5S7;  the  ideal  system, 
617  ff. 

Land-Tenure  {see  also  evo- 
lution; FEUDAL  system;  lanh; 
REAL  property),  source  m 
America,  48;  similar  among 
peoples  of  same  grade,  49 

Lassalle,  F.,  and  labor-saving 
machinerv,  345 

Laughlin,  Prof.,  on  high 
wages,  245 

Law  (see  also  agents;  as- 
signees;  administrators;   ap- 


purtenances; bailments; 

bankrupts;  bets;  contract), 
common,  statute,  administra- 
tive, 22,  65  ff. ;  defined,  65; 
four  principal  sources  from 
which  evolved,  65  ff.;  constitu- 
tional, 65  ff.;  protects  owner- 
ship, 68 ;  affecting  transfers,  69 ; 
of  England  prevails  in  U.  S. 
where  not  in  conflict  with 
statutes,  70;  maxims  of,  77, 
163, 165, 169, 179, 188, 192, 193, 
394,  405;  against  usury,  118; 
against  trusts,  136;  promises 
not  as  binding  as  contracts  in, 
161,  164;  and  religion,  165; 
contracts  that  will  not  be  en- 
forced by,  165;  imposes  self- 
preservation,  166;  but  cannot 
provide  wisdom,  167;  con- 
tracts which  are  assumed  by 
the,  167;  an  evolution,  171; 
possession  nine  points  of  the, 
175;  does  not  require  impos- 
sibilities, 183;  protects  the 
weak,  189;  abhors  litigation, 
193;  judges  people  by  their 
records,  197;  badness  of  pres- 
ent, does  not  prove  goodness 
of  proposed  changes,  220;  no 
magic  in  laws,  237;  natural  and 
civic,  265  ff.;  of  conspiracy, 
267  ff.;  industrial,  289;  protect- 
ing the  weak  and  foolish  even 
against  theinsel ves,  351;  a  lux- 
ury of  the  rich,  352;  cannot 
discriminate  between  people, 
352;  cannot  use  wealth  wisely, 
354;  docs  not  bother  with 
trifles,  394 

Laziness  responsible  for  bad 
government,  7 
Leases,  77 

Lecky,  on  city  debts,  469 
Legal  Aid  Societies,  352 
Legislation,  effects  of  corpo- 
rations    and     trusts     on,    140; 
class,  316 

Legislatures,      13;      in     local 
government,    16;    corrvipted  by 


Index. 


649 


trtists,  140;  Nature  and  human 
nature  before,  598;  abolition 
of,  favored  by  Godkin,  625 

Lessee,  78  ff. 

Liberty,  "eternal  vigilance", 
7,  35;  Anglo-Saxon  principles 
of.  II,  35;  rights  to,  32  ff.; 
limits,  32;  barbarian  and  civ- 
ilized, 33;  curtailed  by  others' 
rights,  33;  duties  balancing 
rights  to,  34;  state's  right  to 
restrain,  34;  in  the  U.  S.  Con- 
stitution, 35;  free  press,  free 
assembly,  36;  the  man  with  a 
"pull",  37>  142,  407,  408,  522; 
freedom  of  opinion,  38;  laws 
threatening,  38 ;  and  pater- 
nalism, 286;    of  individual,  288 

Libraries,  490,  504 

Liens  detined,_i75;  taxing,  613 

Life,  right  to,  25  ff.;  the 
state's  claims,  25,  136:  hu- 
manity's claims,  2  5 ;  profes- 
sional claims,  25;  duty  to  risk, 
25;  regard  for,  in  time  oi 
Henry  VIII.  and  James  II., 
172;  at  present,  172;  influ- 
enced by  taxation,  532 

Life  Estate,  72,  So 

Life-insurance  m  x\tistralasia, 
460,  501 

Lighting,  435  ff. 

Limitations,  statutes  of,  74, 
169 

Lincoln,    Abraham,    rise    of, 

155,  158 

Liquor  Traffic,  limitation  of, 
by  taxation,  540 

Literature,  damage  to,  in  the 
U.S.,  414 

Liverpool,  docks  in,  396; 
wastefulness  of  water-supply  in, 

434 

Livery  of  Seisin,  69 

Living,  right  to  a,  54;  cost  of, 

«335,  336 

Living  Wage,  231,  2S6,  306, 
314;    and  state  socialism,  295 

Lloyd,  H.  D.,  on  compulsory 
arbitration,  300,  304  ff. 


Loan  Society,  Provident,  49S 

Local  Governments,  overlap- 
pings  of,  9;  functions,  10, 
17;  municipalization,  451,  525; 
national  parties  and,  475-478; 
strong,  the  basis  of  Anglo-Saxon 
liberty,  480;  best  in  Great  Brit- 
ain and  Germany,  525  ;  worst  in 
America,  525 

Local  Option  in  taxation,  598 

Locke,  John,  single-tax  the- 
ory of,  596 

Lockouts,  249,  410  «. 

Locomotive,  industrial  change 
effected  by,  345 

Lodging-Houses,  49S 

Logansport,  md.,  electricity 
in,  440 

London,  municipal  operation 
of  trams  in,  42 1 ;  gratt  in, 
421;  pipes  in  railway  tunnels, 
443;   housing  the  poor  in,  493 

London,  Jack,  and  socialism, 
239  ff. 

Loom,  influence  of,  upon 
"the  great  indvistry",  345 

Los  Angeles,  removal  of  elec- 
tive municipal  officers  in,  488 

Lower  depends  on  higher,  93 

Luck,  as  a  way  to  wealth,  209 

Lunatics:    see  insane 

Luxuries,  prices  of,  first  to 
fall  in  hard  times,  346;  Eng- 
land taxes  mainly,  615 

Machinery,  Labor-Saving :  see 

LABOR-SAVING    MACHINERY 

McKinley  Tariff  Bill,  546 

Mcpherson,  J  udgc,  on  picket- 
ing, 275 

Mahomet  and  the  communal 
system,  154,  155 

Mahoney,  T.  J.,  quoted,  27 5 n., 
2S0 

Maine,  Bureau  of  Industrial 
Statistics  of,  on  cheapened  food- 
supply,  329 

Majority,  wrong-headed,  worst 
tyrant  known,  255 

"Making  Work ",212,  217,  218 


650 


Index. 


Mallock,  W.  H.,  on  wages' 
share  of  product,  107,  no;  on 
improved  condition  of  working 
classes,  331  n. 

Managers,  of  government  in- 
stitutions, 227;  of  political 
pulls  versus  managers  of  in- 
dustr}^,  228 

Marcosson,  Isaac  F.,  quoted, 
261  n. 

Marriage     {see    also     home) 
feudal  disposal  in,  47 

Marx,  Karl,  107  ;  "rich  richer 
and  poor  poorer",  and  his 
"bronze  law",  345 

Massachusetts,  Torrens  sys- 
tem in,  84;  increase  of  wages 
in,  330;  improved  condition 
of  machinists  in,  33071.;  pro- 
bated estates  in,  331 ;  police  in, 
480;  and  the  Bell  Telephone 
Co.,  569,  570;  personal-property 
tax  in,  581  w.;  taxation  of 
mortgages  in,  611 

Master  and  Servant  {see  also 
service),  196  ff. 

Mayo-Smith,  Prof.,  on  "un- 
earned increment",  61;  on 
prices,  329;   on  profit,  340 

Meat  Inspection  Bill,  13S 

Metropolitan  Traction  Com- 
pany, broad-minded  manage- 
ment of,  429 

Meyer,  Htigo  R.,  on  muni- 
cipal operation  in  Great  Brit- 
ain, 449  f[.,  525 

Michelet,  J.,  on  effect  of  pri- 
vate property  in   land,    51  «. 

Milan,  pipe-galleries  vmder 
sidewalks  of,  444 

Militarism,  decline  with  bar- 
barism, 48,  156  ff.;  effect  of 
Wars  of  the  Roses  upon,  48; 
a  form  of  status,  156;  in 
Japan,  157;  income-tax  char- 
acteristic of,  570 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  proposes 
government  ownership  of  land, 
55;  on  law  of  wages,  306;  on 
overgovernment,  448;    on  real- 


ty-tax,  588;    on  the  ideal  gov- 
ernment, 624 

'  Mine    Workers,     United,    re- 
striction of  output,  215 

Minimum  Wage,  and  sliding 
scale,  in;  versus  living  wage, 
286;  Prof.  Seager  on  the,  286; 
in  Australasia,  292 

Minors,  contractual  disabili- 
ties of,   187  ff. 

Missouri,  experience  with  rail- 
ways, 399 

Mitchell,  John,  on  loss  due  to 
strikes,  252 

Money  {see  also  paper  money; 
silver),  government  affects 
worth  of,  8 ;  government  manu- 
factures, 9;  can  be  hired  by 
the  man  who  can  use  it  well, 
117;  when  to  be  paid  back, 
168;  legal  tender,  187;  power 
to  print  paper,  questioned  by 
many  lawyers,  187;  not  much 
of  it  essential  to  enjoyment, 
348;  reasons  for  studying,  359; 
general  considerations  on,  359 
ff.;  Tom  Watson  on,  359;  bar- 
ter and,  360;  swindling  by, 
361;  kinds  of,  361;  qualities 
of,  362;  legal  tender  of  bad, 
362;  definition,  363;  bad  buys 
less  than  good,  363;  value  in 
paper,  363;  fiat  money,  364; 
token  money,  364;  redemption 
money,  364;  some  American 
experience,  366  ff. ;  paper  money 
cheats  creditors,  366 ;  and  raises 
prices,  367;  "never  mind  Eu- 
rope", 367;  effect  of  money 
not  redeemable  in  gold,  367; 
depreciation  of  silver  dollar, 
368;  why  coins  not  made 
heavier,  369;  American  re- 
monetization  in  '78  and  '90, 
369;  cheap-money  fallacy,  370 
ff.;  the  rapacious  fooling  the 
ignorant,  370;  who  profits  by 
light-weight  silver?,  371;  poor 
not  the  debtor  class,  372;  ror 
the    class    that    handles    least 


Index. 


651 


gold,  372;  the  panic  of  '93, 
372  {see  also  panic  of  '93); 
government  banking,  375; 
"sixteen  to  one",  376;  im- 
proved trade  balance  supplies 
gold,  377;  light-weight  silver 
money  no  new  scheme,  378; 
poor,  one  of  the  social  pana- 
ceas, 378;  money  questions  no 
longer  a  distinct  issue,  37S; 
needs  for  the  future,  380  ff.; 
best  safeguard,  380;  gold  the 
safest  material,  381;  paper 
better  than  light-weight  silver, 
381;  safety  in  large  bills,  381; 
no  absolutely  safe  material  for, 
381;  only  safe  silver  dollar, 
382;  objections  to  all  govern- 
ment notes,  382;  yet  coin  in- 
sufficient, 383;  good  paper  cur- 
rency preferable,  384;  but  not 
from  government  385;  essen- 
tials of  banknotes,  385;  "wild- 
cat" money,  385;  essentials  of 
a  sound  system,  386;  rag 
money,  386;  basis  for  elastic 
currency,  387;  no  safe  cur- 
rency based  on  commercial 
paper,  388;  farmer's  needs, 
389  ff.;  cheap,  536;  a  medium 
of  exchange,  550;  superfluous, 
603 

Money-Lending,  government 
success  in,  459- 

Monopolies  {see  also  compe- 
tition; corporations;  trusts), 
126,  132  ff. ;  statute  against, 
in  Parliament,  126;  American 
courts  and,  126;  objection  to, 
127;  limit  to  property  rights, 
136;  state  control,  136;  against 
common  and  statute  law,  136; 
law  of  1890  against,  136;  diffi- 
culty of  getting  advantages  out 
of  anti-monopoly  laws,  136; 
controlled  by  corporations,  13S; 
state  interferences  with,  139; 
natural,  144  ff.,  526;  why 
railroads  are,  145;  franchi.scs, 
145 ;  become  personal  property, 


146;  state  competition  with 
291;  and  privilege,  463;  the 
ideal  field  of  the  state  when 
practicable,  468 ;  municipaliza- 
tion a  defence  against,  471; 
government  regulation  of  natu- 
ral, 526,  627;  government  ser- 
vice outside  of  demoralizing, 
528;     social   and  artificial,   627 

Moral  Atmosphere  created  by 
Gautama,   93;    by  Chi'ist,   93 

Morality,  growth  of,  115; 
sound,  promulgators  of,  create 
value  in  material  things,  102 

Morrisey,  Grand  Master,  on 
contract-breakers,  158 

Mortgages  {see  also  land; 
real  property),  70,  76,  123; 
chattels,  150;  double  taxation 
of,  608  ff. ;  a  debt,  not  a  value, 
608;  mortgagor  generally  pays 
tax  indirectly,  609;  not  prop- 
erly real  estate,  610;  in  differ- 
ent states,  610;  mortgagor  pay- 
ing mortgagee's  tax,  611;  why 
tax  mortgages  and  not  notes?, 
612 

Mulhall  on  wages  in  England, 
331,  332;    on  taxation,  531 

Municipal  Corruption,  Ameri- 
can. 473 

Municipal  Difficulties,  Ameri- 
can, 473  ff.;  New  York  in 
1S70,  473;  in  1894,  474;  city 
works  the  plums  of  politicians, 
474;  New  York  in  189S,  474; 
national  parties  in  local  affairs, 
475  ff. ;  this  partly  caused  by 
method  of  electing'  U.  S.  sena- 
tors, 476;  bad  mixing  local 
politics  with  state  and  national, 
477;  civil-service  reform  as  a 
remedy,  478;  Professor  Good- 
now  on  separation  of  state  and 
local  functions,  479:  educa- 
tion, 480;  pohce,  480;  Ameri- 
ca alone  in  confusing  local  and 
national  pohtics,  481;  Ameri- 
can wealth  and  good  nature 
promote  carelessness,  482  ;  debts 


652 


Index. 


of  municipalities,  4S2;  cor- 
ruption of  voters  under  the 
guise  of  charity,  483 ;  pro- 
letariat voting,  484;  Tilden 
Commission's  proposed  remedy, 
485;  local  suffrage  rights  differ 
from  others,  485 

Municipalities,  English,  dog- 
in-the-manger  policy  of,  450; 
obstructive,  451 ;  strangling  pri- 
vate enterprise,  451,  470 

Municipalization  {see  also  mu- 
nicipal difficulties),  best 
where  people  watch  it  most, 
396,  415,  435;  of  railroads,  420 
ff. ;  of  waterworks,  432  ;  of  gas- 
works, 435,  436;  Prof.  Daniels 
quoted,  436 ;  in  New  York,  437  ; 
of  electricity,  440;  of  the  tele- 
phone, 442 ;  tunnels  for  pipes, 
wires,  etc.,  413;  of  advertising 
signs,  445;  Platonists  and  Aris- 
totelians on,  447;  obstructive, 
451;  especially  to  inventive 
talent  ,470;  dangerous  to  purity 
of  government,  453;  objected 
to  in  Glasgow,  454  «.;  English 
elections  against,  455;  leaves 
out  able  men,  455;  Australa- 
sian experience  with,  456  ff . ; 
summary  and  conclusions,  468; 
in  England  municipal  trad- 
ing increases  taxation  with- 
out proportionate  results,  469 ; 
desirable  only  as  defence  against 
monopoly,  471;  as  training  in 
citizenship,  471;  least  in  United 
States,  524;  increases  with  inde- 
pendence, 524;  decreases  with 
police  control,  524;  increases 
with  good  local  government, 
525;  necessary  limits,  526; 
mainly  determined  by  natural 
monopoly,  526 

Municipal  Operation,  of  trams 
in  London,  421;  two  reasons 
for,  424;  Great  Britain  versus 
America,  426;  deteriorating 
private  service  may  compel, 
450;    latest  aspects  of,  447  ff. ; 


in  Great  Britain,  447 ;  retards 
development,  449;  municipal 
ownership  loaded  with,  in  Great 
Britain,  452;  in  Omaha,  461; 
Political  Science  Association  on, 
462 ;  a  question  of  democracy 
on  trial,  465  ;  has  its  largest  fol- 
lowing among  those  who  pay 
no  taxes,  466;  in  a  university 
town  and  a  labor  town^  466; 
fallacious  reasoning,  467  ;  taxes 
increased  with,  531 

Municipal  Ownership  {see  also 
MUNICIPAL  operation),  Hearst 
and,  395;  Prof.  H.  R.  Meyer  on, 
449  fT- 

Municipal  Trading  {see  also 
municipalization),  opposition 
to,  421;  Major  Darwin  on, 
442,  447,  448;  Lord  Avebury 
on,  448,  454  n. ;  Robert  Donald 
on,  454  w.;  taxation  and  debt 
increased  by,  455,  469;  Parlia- 
ment and,  481;  housing  the 
poor.  493 

Murders  and  trade-unions,  254 

Museums,  490 

Names,  no  magic  in,  237 

Napoleon  III.  makes  over 
Paris,  493 

National  Association  of  Manu- 
facturers, 261 

National  Citizens'  Industrial 
Association,  261 

National  Government,  11,  18; 
in  local  politics,  475,  4S1 

National  Metal  Trades  Asso- 
ciation, 261  n. 

National  Municipal  League, 
420  n. 

Natural  Law  and  civic  law, 
265  ff. 

Nature,  laws  of,  23,  114; 
when  an  over-indulgent  parent, 
26;  a  hard  mother  to  the  in- 
effective man,    114 

Navies  produce  value,  102 

Necessities,  prices  of,  tenrl  to 
keep  up  in  hard  times,  346 


Index. 


653 


Need  and  desert,  240 

Negotiable  Paper,  148  ff. 

New  Hampshire,  personal- 
property  tax  in,  58 1  n. 

New  South  Wales  (sec  also 
AUSTRALASIA),  State  Operation 
of  railways  in,  409 

Newton,  Isaac,  93 

New  York  City,  instances  of 
scamping  work  in,  212;  the 
stone-polishers'  union  and  the 
Hotel  Savoy,  217;  street-rail- 
way strike  in,  273;  ferry  fran- 
chises in,  395;  municipal  own- 
ership of  street  railways  in, 
423;  subway  in,  423;  frightful 
swindles  in  connection  with 
water-supply  of,  433;  munici- 
palization of  lighting  plant  and 
surface  railways,  437;  only  one 
voter  in  ten  a  taxpayer,  472; 
municipal  difficulties  in,  in 
1870,  473;  in  1894,  474;  edu- 
cation in,  480;  police  in,  480; 
management  of  parks  in,  490 ; 
Fine  Art  Commission  of,  491; 
housing  the  poor  in,  494 ; 
Provident  Loan  Society  in,  49S; 
Charity  Organization  Society 
in,  499:  most  expensive  city  in 
the  world,  538;  secret  stills  in, 
539;  only  one  man  in  twenty- 
five  pays  direct  taxes,  55S;  per- 
sonal-property tax  in,  579, 
580  «.;  bad  government  of,  an 
obstacle  to  real-estate  invest- 
ment, 592;  equalization  of 
taxation  in*  593;  single  tax  in, 
600;  separated  tax  in,  601; 
rental-value  tax  in,  604;  tax- 
ation of  iTiort gages  in,  609 

New  York  State,  interest  law 
in,  119;  labor  laws  of,  284; 
punishes  attempts  at  suicide, 
285;  accidents  to  laborers  in, 
\  287 ;  idiots  vote  in,  486  n. 
"  New  Zealand  (see  also  Aus- 
tralasia), adjustment  of  labor 
troubles  in,  299;  first  Com- 
pulsory   Arbitration    Act,    299; 


Judge  Backhouse  on,  308;  gov- 
ernment coal-mines  in,  459; 
state  life-insurance  in,  460 ; 
cld-age  pensions  in,  501;  tax- 
ation of  mortgages  in,  611 

Niagara  Falls,  neighborhood 
of,  improved  by  state,  139; 
a  natural  monopoly,  144 

Non-taxpayers,  who  are,  506 

Non-unionists,  their  right  to 
work,  266;  immigrants  enter 
U.  S.  as,  284 

Non-voters,  where  best  taken 
care  of,  487 

North    Carolina,    secret    stills 

in,   539 

Northern  Securities  Co.,  gov- 
ernment suit  against,  137 

Nostrums,  rapid  accumula- 
tion of,  625 

Notes:  iV6' promissory  notes 

Oath,  164 

Obligation  of  Contracts,  317 

Obvious    Direct    Taxes:     see 

DIRECT    TAXES 

Ohio,  labor  bureaus  in,  500 ; 
and  the  Standard  Oil  Co.,  569; 
personal-property  tax  in,  580  n. 

Old-Age  Pensions,    314,    500, 

501 

Omaha,  government  opera- 
tion in,  461 

Open  Shop,  251,  26171.,  262; 
strikes  against,  illegal,  270 

Opinion,  paradoxes  of,   104 

Opportunity,  no  lack  of,  112; 
able  to  embrace  it,  112 

Option,    178,   191 

Organizers  of  transportation 
and  exchange  produce  value, 
102 

Orphans,  care  of,  517 

Orphans'  Court,  47 

Output,  restriction  of,  215 

Overwork  another  naine  for 
overworry,  34S 

Panaceas:  see  social  pana- 
ceas 


6S4 


Index. 


Panama  Canal,  material  to 
be  used  in  building,  215 

Panic  of  '93,  372  fi.;  begins 
with  alarm  in  Europe,  373; 
business  suffers  373;  Kansas 
"triesa  new  way  of  "bleeding", 
374;  hoarding  begins,  374; 
the  banks  and  the  poor,  374; 
Cleveland  stops  the  panic,  374; 
but  at  heavy  cost,  375 

Paper  Money,  361  flf. ;  cheats 
creditors,  366;  raises  prices, 
367 ;  better  than  light-weight 
silver,  381;  safety  in  large 
bills,  381 ;  objections  to  all 
government  notes,  3S2 ;  good 
paper  currency,  384 

Paris,  public  workshops  in, 
30,  230,  231;  tunnel  system  in 
.sewers  of,  444;  gas-pipes  and 
electric  wires  under  sidewalks 
of,  444;  deteriorating  under 
tmiversal  suffrage,  4S6;  opera 
a  botch,  490;  corruption  at- 
tending street  openings  in,  493  ; 
charity  schools  in,  520 

Parks,  490,  505 

Parks,  Sam,  263,  297 

Parliament,  power  to  change 
constitution,  66;  people  can 
change  at  any  time,  66;  statute 
against  monopolies,  126;  and 
labor,  270,  277;  empowers  mu- 
nicipalities to  supply  facilities, 
450,  451;  and  municipal  trad- 
ing, 481 

Partnership,  121,  195 

Part  Payment,  in  contracts, 
174 

Party  Walls,  81 

Passaic,  bad  water-supply  of, 

433 

Pasteur  and  bacteria  in  water, 

433 

Paternalism,  285;    too  much, 

enervating  and  against  liberty, 
286 

Paupers,  children  of  divorced 
parents,  2;  in  London,  332; 
constitutional,    349,    507 ;     neg- 


lect increases  the  number,  508; 
wastes  and  stupidities  in  taxa- 
tion largely  due  to  votes  of,  622 

Pawnshops,  497 

Peabody,  George,  his  fortune 
rightly  acquired,  114;  his  rise, 
155;  benefactions  of,  490 

Peel,  Sir  Robert,  police  made 
a  national  body  by,  4S0 

Penn,  William,  fairness  of 
his  purchase  of  Pennsylvania,  58 

Pennsylvania,  purchase  of,  by 
Penn  for  a  few  beads  a  fair 
bargain,  58;    labor  laws  of,  284 

Pensions,  old-age,  314,  500, 
501;    and  the  tariff,  546 

Personal  Property  (see  also 
ability;  capital;  wealth), 
evolution  of  rights  in,  42,  43, 
87  ff.;  defined,  67;  transfer  of, 
69;  law  of,  14S  ff. ;  seldom 
registered,  148;  passed  by  en- 
dorsement, 148;  can  take  one's 
own  wherever  found  149;  own- 
ership can  be  lost  without 
neglect,  150;  can  be  mortgaged 
without  registry,  150;  agree- 
ments made  regarding,  151; 
the  great  field  of  contract,  151; 
law  of  contracts  concerning, 
173  ff. ;  transfer  of  ownership 
of,  177;  quack  schemes  for 
distributing  rights  in,  208  ff. ; 
remedies  on  trial,  289  ff. ; 
proved  methods  for  diffusing 
rights  in,  325  ff . ;  four  fifths 
exempt  from  taxation  in  New 
York,  5 98  ♦ 

Personal-Property  Tax,  573 
ff . ;  imcertain  of  diffusion,  573; 
tends  to  double  taxation,  574; 
effect  on  prosperity,  575;  Wells 
quoted,  575;  personal  prop- 
erty hard  to  find  or  appraise, 
577;  a  premium  on  lying,  578; 
views  of  authorities,  578;  op- 
eration of  natural  laws,  578; 
abolition  of,  proposed,  578; 
in  New  York,  579;  statistics, 
579  w.;     "publicity"    a    foolish 


Index. 


655 


means  toward  a  foolish  end,  582 ; 
"homogeneity"  fallacy,  5S2; 
effect  on  corporations,  583  ff. ; 
abandoned  in  many  places,  61 S 

Personal  Relations,  law  of  con- 
tracts for.  I  go  ff. 

Philadelphia,  bad  water-sup- 
ply of,  433;  municipal  manage- 
ment of  gasworks  in,  436,  437 

Philanthropy;  wise,  necessary 
to  civilization,  349 

Philosophers  control  policies 
of  nations,  363 

Physiocrats,  single-tax  the- 
ory of,  596 

Picketing,  28,  282;  unlawful, 
275,  410 «.;  Judge  McPherson 
on,  275:   Judge  Quarles  on,  276 

Piecework,  213 

Pipe-Galleries,     underground, 

443 

Pitney,  Vice-Chancellor,  quot- 
ed, 279 

Platonists  and  Aristotelians 
on  municipalization,  447 

Pledges   (for  loans),   151,   185 

Police,  4S0 

Political  Science  Association, 
testimony  on  municipal  opera- 
tion, 462  ff. 

Politicians  running  industries, 
140 

Politics,  and  "civics",  xi,  4, 
5;  duties  of  rich  men  in,  355; 
only  "self-made"  rich  men  en- 
couraged to  go  into^  355;  ef- 
fect of  branch  banks  on,  390; 
in  municipalization,  451;  city 
works  and,  474,  4S5;  national 
parties  in  local,  475  ff. ;  America 
alone  in  confusing  national  and 
local,  481;  under  mask  of 
charity,  483;  in  Chicago  labor 
bureati,  499;  tariff  the  cause 
of  frightful  corruption,  545; 
pensions  and,  546 

Poor  Class,  get  larger  propor- 
tion of  wealth  than  the  rich, 
221  n.,  331  w.;  not  the  debtor 
class,   372;    nor  the  class  that 


handles  least  gold,  372;  super- 
fluous money  given  to,  603 

Poor  Law,  the  English,  29, 
230,  231 

Porter,  R.  P.,  on  municipal 
trading    in      England,    454    n., 

456 

'  Possession  nine  points  of 
the  law",  175 

Postal  Savings-Banks,  332  w., 
498 

Post-Office,  411;  favoritism 
to  papers  and  periodicals,  412; 
in  the  U.  S.  run  at  a  loss,  414; 
government  versus  private  en- 
terprise, 414;  C.  W.  Burrows 
on  postal  policy,  414  m.;  stamps 
from  private  companies,  415; 
best  where  people  watch  it 
most,  415;  Evening  Post  quoted, 
418 

Poverty  (see  also  charity; 
education;  recreations  and 
assistance;  wealth),  cause  of, 
6r,  208,  220;  good  resulting 
from,  115;  seldom  blameless, 
34S ;  constitutional  paupers, 
349,  507;  government  aid,  350, 
351 

Powderly,  T.  V.,  cited,  297 

Prescription,  rights  by,  74 

President,  election  of  the, 
478 

Prices,  regulated  by  demand 
and  supply,  129;  advance  of, 
in  America,  1901-6,  132;  in 
oil,  132;  low  prices  alone  justify 
trvists,  135;  law  of,  136;  trade- 
tmions  agreeing  to  keep  up,  138 ; 
fixing,  139;  decline  since  mid- 
dle of  nineteenth  century,  328  ff.; 
decrease  comes  largely  from 
capital's  share  of  product,  339; 
and  from  labor's  increased  abil- 
ity, 340;  and  from  diffusion  of 
honesty,  341;  effect  of  labor- 
saving  machinery,  344  ff. :  in 
bad  times,  346,  347;  paper 
money  raises,  367;  under  high 
tariffs,  377  ;  affected  by  amount 


656 


Index. 


of  money  in  circulation,  383; 
and  high  taxes  generally,  53S 

Principal,  authorized  acts 
bind,  190;  responsible  for 
agent's  wrong-doing,  193 

Printers,  strike  of,  88,  251, 
254;   making  work  for,  217 

Prisoners:    see  criminals 

Prison  Labor,  512 

Privacy,  565 

Private  Property,  40;  limited, 
40;  evolution  of  rights  of,  42; 
sources,  42 ;  evolution  of,  in 
land,  48;  stimulates  ability,  49 ; 
increases  with  civilization,  5 1 ; 
in  land,  effect  of,  51  n.;  ad- 
vantages of,  in  land  exagger- 
ated, 52  ;  all  schemes  to  abolish, 
are  retrogressive,  62 ;  of  uni- 
versal importance,  62;  evolves 
with  contract  and  freedom,  155; 
essential  to  advance  beyond 
status,  157;  general  govern- 
ment profluction  attacks,   229 

Probate  Courts,  47,  206 

Product,  destroying,  217; 
cheapened  by  labor-saving  ma- 
chinery, 346 

Production,  not  all  by  hand, 
loi;  large,  is  cheap,  133;  not 
commerce,  137;  increase  in, 
336;  rising  with  shorter  work- 
day, 3 3 8,  339;  variety  of,  dif- 
fuses wealth,  343  ;  decrease  in, 
in  bad  times,  346 

"Profit  in  the  last  hour", 
fallacy  of,  337 

Profit-sharing,  municipal,  422 

Progress  in  the  betterment  of 
man's  estate,  325;  made  under 
individualism,  232,  235;  high- 
pressure,  under  socialism, 
241 

Progressive  Taxation,  565 

Proletariat,  jwlitics  and  the, 

4S4,  48,-^ 

Promises  vcr<=us  contracts,  1 6 1 

Promissory  Notes,  76 

Promoters  of  lailways  and 
trusts   produce  value,  102,  103; 


heavy  toll  taken  by,  104;  and 
combinations,  134 

Property,  Rights  of,  {see  also 

PERSONAL  property;  PRIVATE 
property;    REAL   PROPERTY,) 

40  ff . ;  barbarian 's  idea  of.  espe- 
cially in  land,  45 ;  not  all  tangi- 
ble, 109;  as  capital,  116  ff. ;  lim- 
ited, 136 

"Protection"  (of  industries) 
{see  also  tariff  duties),  377, 
544,  547;  effects  of  the  Civil 
Warden  the  tariff,  545;  wages 
under,  548 ;  numbers  concerned, 
549;  who  benefited  by,  549; 
gluts,  550;  effect  on  trusts, 
551 ;  labor  trusts  eager  for,  551 ; 
conclusions,  551;  causes  of 
American  system,  552;  the 
tariff  changed  twenty-five  times 
between  1862  and  1890,  558; 
results  of,  616;  injustice  and 
corruption  of  protective  sys- 
tem, 619;  manufacturers  and, 
622 

Providence,  R.  I.,  revenue 
from  street-railway  franchises 
in  423, 428 

"Providential"   Facts,  323 
Prussia,   Dr.   Soctbecr  on  in- 
come-tax statistics  of,  ^^^  ;  cost 
of  collecting  taxes  in,  558  n. 
Public,  coercing,  255  fif. 
Publicity,  desirability  of,  467 
Public  Policy,  204,  270 
Public-service      Corporations, 
Prof.    Adams    on,    410;      Prof. 
Rowc  on,  ^64 

Public  Utilities,  Commissioner 
of,  422 

Public  Works  {see  also  muni- 
cipal difficulties;  munici- 
palization; railroads; ROADs; 
street  railways:  water- 
works), extra-municipal,  391 
ff.;  roads,  391;  bridges,  393; 
ferries  and  docks,  395;  rail- 
roads, 396;  post-office,  411; 
telegraph,  415;  municipal,  420 
ff. ;  street  railways,  420;  water- 


Index. 


657 


works,  432;  gasworks,  435; 
electricity,  440;  telephone,  442; 
tearing  up  streets,  443 ;  tun- 
nels for  pipes,  wires,  etc.,  443 ; 
advertising  signs,  445;  sum- 
mary and  conclusions  on  mu- 
nicipalization of.  468  ff.,  523 
ff. ;  city  works  the  plums  of 
politicians,  474,  485  ;  and  super- 
fluous money,  603 

"  Pull",  the  man  with  a,  37, 
142;  in  railroad  management, 
407;  in  education,  522  ;  in  tax- 
ation, 591 

Pullman,  G.  M.,  and  civic 
responsibility,  142 

Pursuit  of  Happiness,  right  to 
work,  26  ff . ;  rights  to  the,  39  ff . ; 
a  general  name  for  many  rights, 
39;   restricted,  39,  40,  63 

Quantum  meruit,  167 

Quantum  valebat,  168;  some 
limits  of,  1 88;    enrichment,  188 

Quarles,  Judge  J.  V.,  on 
picketing,  276 

Quasi-Contractual  Relations, 
law  of,  199  ff.;  trtisteeship,  199; 
assignees,  200;  safeguards,  200; 
administrators,  201 ;  devolution 
of  intestate  estates,  201;  ex- 
ecutors, 202;  wills,  202;  guard- 
ianship, 206;  need  of  probate 
courts,  206;  trustees  for  defec- 
tives, 207  ;  court  supervision  of 
trustees  in  general,  207 

"  Quick  "  Securities,  384 

Rae,  John,  on  eight-hour  day, 
337 

Rag  Money,  386 

Railroad  Rate  Bill,  13S,  405, 
406 

Railroads  {see  also  eminent 
domain;  right  of  way;  street 
^railways),  German  employees' 
accident  insurance,  30 ;  right  of 
way,  64;  right  to  build  often 
sold  before  work  is  begun,  109: 
service  improved  by  commercial 


travelers,  129;  and  anti-trust 
law  of  1890,  138;  Railroad 
Rate  Bill,  138,  405,  406;  rates 
regulated  by  law,  139;  setting 
a  limit  to  profits  they  shall 
divide,  139;  why  monopolies, 
145;  streets  taken  for,  145;  in 
United  States,  396  ff. ;  in  Eng- 
land, 397,  401;  in  France,  397; 
in  Germany,  397  flf . ;  in  Italy, 
391)  398>  407;  superior  service 
in  England  and  America,  397; 
Bryan  favors  government  oper- 
ation of,  399;  Roosevelt  and, 
399;  relations  between  govern- 
ment and,  400,  401;  American 
construction  less  thorough  than 
in  Europe,  400;  and  inci- 
dentally less  careful  of  safety, 
401 ;  grade-crossings  almost  un- 
known in  Europe,  401;  freight 
discriminations,  401;  consoli- 
dation and  competition,  402 ; 
freight  and  passenger  rates 
comparatively  low  and  steadily 
declining,  403,  405;  consti- 
tutional questions,  403 ;  char- 
ters for,  404 ;  taxation  of  fran- 
chises, 404 ;  regulating  charges, 
405;  bankrupt  railroads,  405; 
unsuccessfulness  of  government 
regulation  not  complete  argu- 
ment for  government  manage- 
ment, 406;  "labor"  under  gov- 
ernment operation,  408;  in  Can- 
ada, 408 ;  Canadian  experience, 
408;  government  aid  and  regu- 
lation, 411 

Ramapo  scheme  of  water- 
supply,  433 

Raw  Material  a  source  of 
property.  42;  derived  origi- 
nally froiTi  land  and  sea,  44 

Real  Estate :  see  real  prop- 
erty 

Real  Property  {see  also  deeds  ; 
land;  private  property;  re- 
alty-taxes), rights  to,  40  ff., 
44  ff . ;  early  conditions,  44 ; 
imder  feudal  system,  46;    title, 


658 


Index. 


how  acqtiired,  59;  occupier's 
rights  in  improvements,  60 ; 
law  of  rights  in,  65  ff.;  defined, 
67;  laws  protecting  ownership, 
68 ;  damages  for  trespass,  68 ; 
right  of  ejectment,  68;  trans- 
fers, 69  ff. ;  contracts  of  sale, 
69,  70;  deeds,  70,  76,  77,  78; 
life-estate,  72;  dower  and  cour- 
tesy, 72;  registr>',  73,  77;  title- 
search,  73;  judgments,  74; 
prescriptions,  74 ;  title  insur- 
ance, 74;  clouds  on  title,  75; 
delivery  of  deed,  76 ;  mortgages, 
76;  bonds,  76;  equity  of  re- 
demption, 76;  leases,  77;  fraud- 
ulent transfer,  78;  technical 
meaning  of  "estate",  78;  es- 
tates for  years,  78,  79;  life-es- 
tates, 80  f  estates  at  will,  80; 
appurtenances,  80 ;  riparian 
owners,  81;  restricted  estatesj 
83 ;  idle,  563 ;  taxation  re- 
stricted to,  600;  some  imim- 
proved,  useless,  601 

Realty:  see  real  property 
Realty-Taxes  {see  also  appro- 
priation-tax; SINGLE  tax; 
separated  tax),  in  general, 
586  ff. ;  objections,  586;  his- 
tory, 586;  incidental  to  high 
civilization,  587;  diffusion,  587; 
views  of  economists,  5S8;  fact 
versus  theory,  588;  effects  on 
producers,  589;  stimulate  pro- 
duction, 589;  sure  to  be  paid, 
590;  easy  to  assess,  590;  cheap- 
est to  collect,  591;  all  owners 
must  always  pay  part,  591; 
summary  for  and  against,  591; 
opinion  of  the  Fathers,  592; 
equalization,  593  ;  varieties,  $gs 
ff. ;  realty-tax  proper,  595: 
single  tax,  595,  596;  separated 
tax,  601:  ap]jrfipriation-tax, 
603;  rental-valtie  tax,  604;  not 
a  real-estate  tax,  604 ;  not 
double  taxation  605;  should 
be  on  one  residence  only,  605; 
shifting,  606;  franchise-tax,  606; 


virtually  a  real-estate  tax, 
606 

Reciprocity  Treaties,  542,  547 

Records,  law  judges  people  by 
their,  197 

Recreations  and  Assistance 
(see  also  charity;  education), 
490  ff . ;  general  government 
production  attacks  property, 
contract  and  charity,  229;  mu- 
seums and  libraries,  490  ;  parks, 
490;  clearing  slums,  491 ;  hous- 
ing the  poor,  494 ;  personal  con- 
veniences, 494;  army  outfitting, 
etc.,  494,  495;  economy  and 
civilization  both  require  charity, 
495;  hospitals  and  asylums, 
496;  relief  to  individual  poor, 
497;  pawnshops,  497 ;  savings- 
banks,  498;  lodging-houses, 
498;  Charity  Organization  So- 
ciety, 499;  labor  bureaus,  499; 
insurance  against  idleness  of 
old  age,  500 ;  general  conclu- 
sions regarding  charity,  501; 
inutual  help  better  than  gov- 
ernment help,  502  ;  the  Church, 
the  State,  the  philanthropist, 
502;    taxpayers  and,  503 

Redemption-Money,  364 

Reeves,  W.  P.,  father  of  first 
Compulsory  Arbitration  Act, 
298,  299;  quoted,  301,  307  ff . ; 
arguments  for  enlarging  func- 
tions of  state,  461 

Registry  (of  real  estate),  73; 
rights  of  third  parties,  77 

Regulation,  government,  of 
monopolies  in  America,  405,  406 

Relief,  public,  (sec  also  char- 
ity,) 30 

Religion  and  law,  164 

Rent,  60,  1 18 

Rental-Value  Tax  (see  also 
realty-taxes),  603  ff. ;  on 
consumption,  604;  not  a  real- 
estate  tax,  604 ;  New  York  and, 
604 ;  may  ultimatel}'^  replace 
vampire-taxes,  615;  Prof.  Sea- 
ger  on,  618 


Index. 


659 


Representative  defined,  17 
Reputation,  right  to,  41 
Respondeat  superior,  193 
Revenue:  5t?t-' taxation 
Ricardo,    D.,    on    realty-tax, 
5SS 

Richmond,  revenue  from 
street-railway  franchise  in,  423, 
428;     municipal    gasworks    in, 

43  7 

"  Rich  richer  and  poor 
poorer",  345,  556;  not  true  in 
civilized  countries,  328 

Right,  the  adjective,  defined, 

113 

Right  of  Way  {see  also  ap- 
purtenances), railroad   64 

Right     to     Work      {see     also 

SCAMPING  work;  STRIKES; 

work),  defined,  26  ff . ;  and 
trade-tmions,  26;  suhiect  only 
to  the  state,  26;  interferences, 
28,  38,  214;  duties  condi- 
tioning, 28;  strikes,  28;  boy- 
cott, 28;  involves  rights  of 
property  and  exchange,  40; 
limitations,  40,  255;  involves 
'  right  to  contract,  40 ;  and  to 
reputation,  41;  government 
protection,  41,  409;  non- 
unionists',  266;  property  in,  282 
Rights,  defined,  6,  21  ff.,  23; 
protection  of,  a  function  of  gov- 
ernment, 6;  citizen's,  regulated 
by  nation  in  two  fields,  i  r ;  im- 
pose duties,  21;  moral  and 
legal,  22;  classified,  23;  rights 
measured  by  duties,  a  law  of 
Nature,  23;  and  duties  imply 
each  other,  23,  507;  to  life,  25 
if.;  to  work,  26  ff.,  410;  to 
liberty,  32  ff.;  Bill  of,  35;  to 
pursuit  of  happiness,  39  ff.; 
to  real  property,  40  ff.,  44  ff. ; 
of  property,  40  ff.,  44,  log, 
^ii6  ff.,  136;  under  contract, 
40,  152  ff.,  159  ff.;  to  rep- 
utation, 41;  to  a  home,  53; 
to  a  living,  54;  in  improve- 
ments,   60;     of    way,    64;     by 


prescription,  74;  value  of  some 
intangible  ones,  100;  to  de- 
mand versus  to  prohibit,  152 

Riparian  Owners,  81 

Roads,  land  beside,  81;  in 
general,  391  ff . ;  as  spreading 
civilization,  391;  evolution  in 
our  race,  392;  bad  American 
organization,  392;  local  inde- 
pendence obstructive  of  good, 
393;  splendid  English,  393  ;  tolls 
on,  393 

Robbery,  government  taking 
land  by,  56;  schemes  of,  by 
taxation,    568,    604 

Rochester,  street  railways  in, 
427 

Rockefeller,  J.  D.,  and  the 
gateway    of    opportunity,     239 

Rogers,  Thorold,  on  income- 
tax,  571 

Romans  the  great  road-build- 
ers, 391  ff 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  and 
unionists,  265;  and  injunc- 
tions, 2S1;  his  coal-strike  com- 
mission, 298;  and  the  rail- 
roads, 399 

Rowe,  Prof.,  on  pub'ic-ser- 
vice  corporations,  464 

Rudolph  of  Hapsburg  and  the 
feudal  system,   155 

Ruskin  and  socialism,   233 

Russia,  serfs  of,  45,  156; 
cominunal  land  in,  45,  62  ;  with- 
out a  constitvition,  66;  labor 
in,  90;  not  much  changed  from 
condition  of  status,  156;  most 
forward  in  socialism,  456;  tax- 
ation in,  533 ;  and  the  Dingley 
Act,  543 

Ryots  of  India  45 

Sale,  contracts  of,  for  real 
estate,  69,  70;  and  delivery, 
173;  as  affected  by  statute  of 
frauds,  173;  by  part  payment, 
174;    under  prior  lien,   175 

Salvation  Army's  Farm  Col- 
onies, 53 


66o 


Index. 


San  Francisco,  earthquake  in, 
235,  244,  434;  and  street  rail- 
ways, 424;  personal-property 
tax  in    580  n. 

Savings,  protection  of  rights 
in,  116;  of  laborers  now  put 
into  provident  societies  in- 
stead of  homes,  124 

Savings-Banks,  332  n.,  374, 
498;   taxation  of,  584 

Scamping  Work,  209;  "The 
Crime  of  Mrs.  Derrick",  210  «. ; 
further  illustrations,  210  n.; 
keeps  the  scamper  out  of  jobs, 
212;  scamper  gets  only  one 
profit  but  pays  many,  213:  and 
cannot  long  receive  good  wages, 
213;  piecework,  213;  pretend- 
ing and  forbidding  labor,  214; 
no  need  of  industrial  suicide  by, 
343;    and  taxation,  536 

Schurz,  Carl,  as  a  citizen,  355 

Scotland,  Glasgow  Bank  fail- 
ure, 122;  improved  dwellings  of 
the  poor  in,  332  n.,  493;  branch 
banks  in,  390;  municipal  gas- 
plants  in,  436;  extension  _  of 
street  lighting  in,  436;  objec- 
tion to  municipal  trading  in, 
454 «.;  why  Scotch  whiskey 
smells  of  smoke,  539 

Scribner,  Charles,  spirit  that 
actuated,  142 

Scutage  (shield-money")  im- 
posed by  Henry  II.,  48,  587 

Seager,  Prof.,  on  trusts,  135; 
on  conspiracy,  274,  275;  on 
labor  laws,  283;  "protecting  the 
laborer  against  himself",  284; 
on  regulation  of  wages  and 
hours,  285;  on  the  minimum 
wage,  286;   on  rent-tax,  618 

Seal  (on  instruments),  70,  71, 
75,  123    168 

Seattle,  municipal  car-lines 
rejected  by  voters,  424 

Securities,  122;  European  in- 
vestments in  American,  123; 
quick,  384 

Seisin,  livery  of,  69 


•    Self-defence,  state's  right  of, 
288 

Seligman,  Prof.,  on  personal- 
property  tax,  5S1  n.\  on  realty- 
tax,  5  88 

Senate,  U.  S.,  ten  thousand 
years  of  history  required  to  get 
up  to,  242 ;  economic  investi- 
gations by,  329;  method  of 
electing  members  of,  bad  for 
local  government,  476,  478 

Separated  Tax,  on  land  ex- 
clusive of  improvements,  601 
ff. ;  in  New  York,  601;  build- 
ings diffvise  taxes  more  readily 
than  land,  602 ;  improvement 
encouraged  by,  602 

Serfdom,  153 

Serfs  of  Russia,  45 

Service,  164,  196  fif. ;  con- 
tracts for,  167;  discharge  for 
cause  stops  pay  for  rest  of 
term,  196;  discharge  without 
cause,  or  leaving  for  cause,  does 
not,  197;  both  employer  and 
employee  bound  for  entire  term, 
197 

Settlements  (University,  etc.),* 
484,  520 

Shaw,  Albert,  on  municipal 
goveminent,  420  £E.,  48 2  n. 

Shea,  C.  P.,  on  principles  of 
trade-unionism,  178 

Shearman,  T.  G.,  on  street- 
railway  franchises,  607 

Sherman  Interstate  Act,  138; 
unions  and,  266  n. 

Shield-Money,  48,  5S6 

Ship  of  State  not  built  for 
speed,  241 

Sickness:    5ce  disease 

Sigel,  Franz,  as  a  citizen,  355 

Signs,  advertising,  a  source 
of  municipal  revenue,  445 

Sill,  E.  R.,  cited,  92 

Silver  (see  also  money),  agita- 
tion of   1890   destroyed  values, 
102;    price  of,  rising,  368;    and 
the    U.    S.    Treasury,    372    ff . ; 
1  supply  of,  375 


Index. 


66i 


Single  Tax,  595;  paid  by 
Nature,  582;  Locke's  theory, 
595;  Henry  George's,  595,  621; 
Walpole's,  596;  physiocrats' 
theory,  596;  diffusion  on  differ- 
ent grades  of  property,  597; 
agricultural  land  at  a  disad- 
vantage under,  597;  local  op- 
tion in  taxation,  598;  effect  of, 
if  suddenly  imposed,  599;  ex- 
perience, 600 ;  an  evolution  that 
is  nearly  accomplished,  600 ; 
Australasians  find  it  satisfac- 
tory, 600;  boon  to  the  poor, 
621;   why  delayed,  622  ff. 

"Sixteen  to  One"  {see  also 
money),  376 

Slavery,  153-^55 

Slaves  of  America,  154 

Sliding  Scale,  1 1 1 

Slums,  491;  clearing,  pos- 
sible only  under  eininent  do- 
main, 492 

Smith,  Adam,  on  bad  tax- 
laws,  532;    on  realty-tax,  58S 

Smith,  Postmaster-General 
quoted,  413 

Smugglers,  541 

Sociability,  happiness  in,  34 

Social  Influence  and  Control, 
2 ;  through  the  family,  2 ; 
through  public  opinion,  imita- 
tion, education,  and  govern- 
ment, 3 

Socialism,  220  ff. ;  Spencer 
and,  27,  570,  629;  as  a  re:nedy 
for  corruption  and  trusts,  140; 
attacks  contract,  158;  defined, 
025;  would  keep  wages  down, 
226;  impracticability  of  politi- 
cal management,  226;  losses  to 
education,  charity  and  liberty, 
226;  forcing  ability,  227;  fu- 
tility of  attempting  it  by  emi- 
nent domain,  230;  a  premium 
on  laziness,  230;  effect  on 
laborers,  230;  would  destroy 
freedom,  231 ;  the  unemployed, 
231;  and  individualism,  232; 
a  vague  name,  233  ;   Ruskin  and 


Tolstoy  and,  233;  four  uses  of 
the  term,  234;  against  compe- 
tition, 234;  earthquakes  and 
fires  under,  235;  greed  and 
graft  and,  238;  Jack  London 
and,  239  ff. ;  capitalism  and, 
239;  expression  of  the  ideals 
of,  240;  high -pressure  progress 
under;  241,  when  possible,  will 
be  needless,  242;  living  wage 
and,  295;  arbitration  a  step 
toward,  319;  Russia  most  for- 
ward in,  456;  logical-  conclu- 
sion of,  is  social  war,  570 

Socialists,  their  hope  of  suc- 
cess,   242 ;     and   washerwomen, 

495 

Social  Panaceas,  291,  472; 
socialism,  219  ff. ;  strikes,  334; 
poor  money,  378 

Society,  its  control  of  the  in- 
dividual   I  ff. 

Soetbeer,  Dr.,  on  Prussian  in- 
come-tax statistics,  t,;^,^, 

Soup-Houses,  public,  31 

Sovereign  defined,  12 

Spain,  b-ggars  in,  349 

Sparta,  skill  in  theft  a  virtue 

in,   157 

Specific  Performance,  19S 

Speculation,  legitimate,  stead- 
ies prices,  353 

Spencer,  Herbert,  93;  and 
socialism,  27,  570,  629;  created 
value  in  material  things,  103; 
Law  of  Equilibration,  327;  on 
A:nerican  good  nature,  483 

Squatters,  68 

Stamp-Taxes,  553;  both  di- 
rect and  indirect,  554;  often 
merely  a  petty  nuisance,  554 

Standard  Oil  Co.,  255;  forced 
out  of  Ohio  by  taxation,  569 

Stanford,  Leland,  238 

State  Government,  10,  18 

State  Socialism  and  status 
synonymous  terms,  319 

Statistics,  vice  of,  458;  value 
of,  qualitative,  459 

Status,  154;   versus  contract, 


662 


Index. 


154;  militarism  a  form,  of,  156; 
why  private  property  essential 
to  advance  beyond,  157;  state 
socialism      synonymous      with, 

319 

Statute   of   Frauds,    69,    174, 

180;    of  Limitations,  74,  169 
Statute  Law:   see  law 
Steam,    industrial    effect    of, 

345 

Steamboats    in    competition, 

131 

Stephenson,  George,  influence 
exerted  by  his  locomotive,  345 

Stewart,  Alexander,  econo- 
mies effected  by,  98,  loi;  for- 
tune    of,     114;     usefulness   of, 

353 

Stickney,  A.  B.,  on  the  rail- 
road problem,  402 
Stills,  secret,  539 
Stock  Exchanges,  123,  124 
Stocks,     common     and     pre- 
ferred,  122;    and  bonds,  differ- 
ences   between,     123;     not    all 
dealt    in    at    exchanges,     124; 
for    whom    good    investments, 
124;     by    whom    owned,     124; 
civic    questions    answered    by, 
124;     watered,     134;     endorse- 
ment on,  149 

Street-Begging,  499 
Street-Openings,  492,  493 
Street  Railways,  420  ff. ;  evo- 
lution of,  420;  in  Germany, 
420;  in  England,  420;  in 
Scotland,  420;  in  Ireland,  421; 
in  Hamburg,  421 ;  in  New  York, 
428;  municipal  operation  in- 
creasing in  England,  little  on 
Continent,  in  America  none, 
420;  municipal  sharing  of  pro- 
fits advancing  in  America,  422; 
government  inspection  of,  422; 
reasons  for  municipalization, 
424;  in  San  Francisco,  424; 
increment  in  franchises,  428; 
should  be  leased  but  not  sold, 
and  each  city's  under  one 
management,  428,  429;    public 


should  share  in  profits  rather 
than  receipts,  428 

Strikers  {see  also  strikes), 
government  suits  against,   137 

Strikes  (see  also  scamping 
work),  104,  244  247  ff.,  411; 
when  justifiable,  28;  "The 
Crime  of  Mrs.  Derrick",  2ion.; 
truckmen's,    88;     printing,    88, 

251,  254;      Prof.     Adams     on, 

252,  410;  leading  statistics 
of,  252;  non-union  compared 
with  union,  252;  decrease  of. 
since  1903,  253  •  funeral-drivers', 
256  ff.;  in  Chicago,  261  ».; 
when  illegal,  263,  270,  271; 
avoiding,  263;  right  to,  267; 
against  labor-saving  machiner}'', 
270;  street-railway  strike  in 
New  York,  273;  and  arbitra- 
tion coiurts  297;  coal-strike 
commission,  298;  in  Austral- 
asia, 298,  307,  323;  damages 
in,  301 ;  in  America,  324;  in  the 
twentieth  century,  329;  "sym- 
pathetic", immediate  interest 
and  the,  271,  311;  conflicting 
laws  on,  271  ff. ;  effect  of  com- 
pulsory arbitration  on,  302  ;  as 
affected  by  government  owner- 
ship of  railways,  408;  railway, 
in  New  South  Wales,  409 

Struggle  for  Existence  ceasing 
to  be  a  brute  struggle,  630 

"Sturmsee"  quoted,  259,  278, 
281 

Subways,  443,  444 

Succession   Tax   in  England, 

331 

Suffrage  (ses  also  voters; 
UNIVERSAL  suffrage),  limita- 
tion of,  484  ff . ;  in  Europe  gen- 
erally, 484,  4S5;  plan  of  Tilden 
Commission,  485;  in  Berlin,  486; 
local  rights  differ  from  others, 
485;  limited  local,  in  all  well- 
govenied  cities,  485;  elevating 
the,  487;  should  be  improved, 
629 

Sugar     Trust,     Knight     case 


Index. 


66- 


against,  137;  and  the  Wilson 
Bill,  140,  546 

Supply  and  Demand,  129 

Supreme  Court,  on  conspir- 
acy, 26S ;  and  eight-hour  law, 
284;  affirms  propriety  of  labor 
laws,  2S5  ;  appointment  of,  478  ; 
income-tax  of  '94  declared  un- 
constitutional by  553,  570; 
and  taxation,  610 

Suretyship,   iSo 

Surrogate's  Court,  47 

Sweating  in  Australasia, 
292-294 

Switzerland,  roads  in,  393  ;  in- 
come-tax in,  57 T 

Taff-Va!e  Case,  277 
Tammany,  430,  463;    organ- 
ized to  influence  voters,  4S3 
Tariff:     see    tariff    duties; 

PROTECTION 

Tariff  Bill,  defeated  by  Sugar 
Trust,  140,  546;  McKinley, 
546;  Wilson,  546 

Tariff  Duties  {see  also  pro- 
tection), effect  on  prices,  377, 
54  I ;  encourage  home  produc- 
tion, 541;  tariff  wars,  542  ;  the 
foreigner  sometimes  pays,  533, 
543;  a  weapon  of  .war,  542; 
our  hand  against  every  man, 
543 ;  early  American  experi- 
ence, 544;  from  the  Revolu- 
tion to  the  Civil  War,  544; 
since  the  Civil  War,  545;  in- 
dustrial effects,  546;  both  par- 
ties corrupted,  546;  tariffs  tend 
to  expand,  547 ;  an  act  of 
aggression,  547;  on  raw  mate- 
rials, 547  ;  xjrotection  and  wages, 
548;  numbers  concerned,  549; 
gluts,  550;  Atkinson  on  the 
tariff,  550;  effect  of  protec- 
tion on  trusts,  551;  conclu- 
sion on  protection,  551;  causes 
of  American  system,  552;  ex- 
pert opinion,  552;  should  be 
only  on  articles  that  cannot  be 
produced  at  home,  616 


Tariff  League,  European, 
against  the  U.  S.,  543 

Taxation  {sec  also  direct 
taxes;  double  taxation;  in- 
direct taxes;  pmiSONAL-PROP- 
ERTY      tax;       REALTY-TAXES),     a 

function  of  government,  6; 
taxes  paid  mostly  by  land- 
owners, 56;  incorrect  principles 
of,  destroy  value,  102;  of 
franchises,  404 ;  in  Austral- 
asia, highest  among  civilized 
people,  457;  increased,  in  Eng- 
lan  1  by  municipal  trading 
without  proportionate  restilts, 
469;  local  taxes  more  than 
till ee -quarters  of  the  national 
474 ;  of  commodities  tmiver- 
sally  used,  527;  general  con- 
siderations, 529  ff. ;  not  the 
only  source  of  revenue,  529; 
interest  and  importance  of  the 
subject,  530;  in  historj^-making, 
530;  everybody  pays  taxes  530; 
increased  with  inunicipal  opera- 
tion, 531;  Atkinson  on,  531; 
rates  in  different  countries,  531 ; 
methods  influence  rate,  531; 
and  genera]  well-being,  532 
taxes  affect  movements  of  capi- 
tal and  ability,  533 ;  civiliza- 
tion and,  ^2,2) !  ojjposite  methods 
illustrated^  533;  men  gener- 
ally geese  in  questions  concern- 
ing; 534>  559!  direct  and  in- 
direct taxes,  534;  shifting  of 
taxes,  536;  scamping  work 
and,  536;  for  maintenance  of 
idle  prisoners,  536;  important 
principle  of,  537;  need  of  free 
competition,  537;  prices  high- 
est where  taxes  are  highest. 
538;  raised  by  tariff  duties  a 
weapon,  551;  ideal,  564;  tax- 
ing incomes  tends  to  double, 
565;  progressive,  565;  as  affect- 
ing benevolence,  568;  schemes 
of  robber}^  by,  568,  604;  per- 
sonal-property tax  tends  to 
double,  574;   taxes  not  paid  on 


o'64 


Index. 


bonds,  577;  abolition  of  per- 
sonal, proposed,  578;  corpora- 
tions, 583  ff.;  franchises  should 
be  taxed,  ^84;  equalization, 
593-,  local  option,  598;  re- 
stricted to  real  property,  600; 
double  taxation,  608  ff. ;  of 
mortgages,  608  ff. ;  at  the 
source,  609,  613,  614;  bottom 
principle  of,  609;  U.  S.  Su- 
preme Court  and,  610;  excises 
multiply,  613;  taxing  liens, 
613;  summary  and  conclu- 
sions, 615  if.;  perfect,  not  for 
imperfect  people,  615;  vam- 
pire-taxes needed  now,  615; 
rental-value  tax  may  ultimately 
replace  them,  615;  inquisition- 
taxes  intolerable,  616;  the  re- 
mote ideal,  617;  Nature  pays 
some  taxes,  617;  and  can  pay 
all,  618;  evolution  of,  618; 
the  ideal,  619;  future  of,  619: 
single  tax  no  hardship  to  land- 
owners, 620;  amortization,  620; 
single  tax  a  boon  to  the  poor, 
621:  how  to  include  all  citi- 
zens, 622;  wastes  and  stupidi- 
ities,  in,  largely  due  to  pauper 
voters,  622;  causes  of  delay, 
622  fE.;  ignorance  and  self-seek- 
ing, 622;  in  the  U.  S.  Constitu- 
tion, 623 

Taxpayers,  in  New  York,  472; 
e.i,?>:  suffrage  rights  of,  4S4  ff-i 
Tilden  Commission's  plan,  485; 
graded  in  Germany,  486;  and 
recreations,  503;  increase  in 
their  number  the  best  security 
for  an  orderly  and  happy  com- 
munity, 505;  many  improve- 
ments not  at  taxpayer's  expense, 
505;     Prof.   Trent  on  indirect, 

Telegraph    and    government, 

41=;  .  .     ,.     ,. 

Telephone,    municipalization 

of  the,  442 
Tenant,  70  ff. 
Tender,  1 86 ;   kinds  of  money 


in,    187;     determined   by    Con- 
gress, 187;   bad  money  as  legal, 

3'52. 

Tennessee,  secret  stills  in,  539 
Texas,  suffrage  in,  484 
Theatre     in     Germany     and 
France,  490 

Thiers,  L.  A.,  on  diffusion  of 
taxation,  536 

Things,     made     to     embody 
thoughts,  92  ;   value  of,  depends 
on  value  of  idea  embodied,  92 
Thinkers  produce  value,  102 
Thornton,  W.  T.^  on  pretend- 
ing to  work,  214 

Tilden  Commission,  485 
Title,    search   of,    73;     insur- 
ance, 74;  clouds  on^  75 
Tobacco,  tax  on,  539 
Token-Money,  364 
Toledo,  O.,  gas-plant  in,  437 
Tolls,     392;      now    generally 
abandoned    303;    still  taken  on 
East  River  bridges,   394 
Tolstoy  and  socialism,  233 
Tools  a  form  of  capital,  117 
Torrens  System  (of  land  trans- 
fer), 84 

Trade  and  civilization  go  to- 
gether, 157;  improved  balance 
of,  supplies  gold,  377 

Trade-Unionists,  proportion 
of,  to  population  in  the  U.  S.,  27, 
260;  attacks  on  law,  278;  pro- 
i)ortion  of,  in  New  Zealand  and 
Western  Australia,  316 

Trade-Unions,  and  the  right  to 
work,  26;  and  "greatest  happi- 
ness "  principle,  27  ;  competition 
among  mechanics  active  despite 
regulation  of,  105;  government 
suits  against,  137;  agreeing  to 
keep  up  prices,  138;  C.  P.  Shea 
on  principles  of ,  1 78 ;  coercion  of 
bosses,  214;  secure  the  incom- 
petent higher  wages,  214;  coer- 
cion by,  243  ff.;  falling  off  of 
membership  of,  253;  typograph- 
ical, 253;  murders  and,  254; 
fxmeral-drivers',  256;  promotion 


Index. 


665 


of  peace,  legitimate  function  of, 
264 ;  when  in  opposition  to  laws 
of  Nature  and  the  state,  265; 
and  Sherman  Anti-Trust  Act, 
266  n.;  liability  for  damages, 
277,  278;  permanent  destruc- 
tion of,  deplorable,  283;  influ- 
ence in  raising  wages  and  in- 
creasing intelligence,  340 ;  of 
railroad  employees,  408 ;  honor 
among  members  of,  409 ;  versus 
prison  labor,  512;  service  in 
keeping  wages  up  to  point  of 
equation,  627 

Transfer  of  Land,  69;  effect 
of  fraud,  78;  the  Torrens  sys- 
tem, 84 

Trans-Missouri  Freight  Asso- 
ciation, government  suit  against 

137 

Transportation,  organizers  of, 
102  ;   decline  in  cost  of,  335 

Trent,  Prof.,  on  indirect  tax- 
payer, 559 

Trespass,  68 
•  Trustees:  se'^  quasi-contrac- 
tual RELATIONS 

Trusts  (see  also  capital 
trusts;  labor  trusts),  132; 
' '  human  nature ' '  and,  132; 
Bellamy  and  the  benign,  132; 
public  loses  benefit  of  competi- 
tion in,  132  ;  who  gets  benefit  of 
cooperation  in,  132  ;  their  econ- 
omv,  133;  not  generally  profit- 
able, 134;  effect  of  inordinate 
prices  on,  135;  not  an  unmixed 
good,  135 ;  control  of  output  by, 
135;  Prof.  Seager  on,  135;  state 
control  of,  136;  laws  against, 
136;  Beef  Trust,  137;  corrup- 
tion of  legislatures  by,  140;  Bel- 
lamy's proposition,  140;  in 
Birmingham,  304;  effect  of  pro- 
^tective  tariff  on,  551 

Tunnels,  for  pipes,  wires,  etc., 
443 ;    municipal,  444 

Turkey,  without  a  constitti- 
tion,  66;   taxation  in,  534 


Tweed,  W.  M.,  and  munici- 
pal corruption,  463,  474,  482  ff. 

Unearned  Increment,  57  ff., 
506;  claimed  for  the  poor,  60; 
not  characteristic  of  land  alone, 
60;  Prof.  Mayo-Sinith  on,  61; 
paying  rent  on,  cause  of  poverty, 
61;  of  franchises,  394,  428;  of 
street  railways,  428 

Unemployable,  caring  for  the, 
286,  351 

Unemployed,    231,    254,    350, 

499 

Unfortunates,  349 

Unionists:  see  trade  union- 
ists 

Unions  (see  also  trade- 
UNiONs),  employers'  and  citi- 
zens' industrial,    253 

United  States,  corporations  in, 
50 ;  in  process  of  evolution  or  of 
dissolution?,  328;  loss  to,  in 
carrying  advertisements,  412; 
books  in,  414;  paternalism 
in,  517;  government  of,  increase 
in  cost,  558 

Universal  Suffrage  (see  also 
taxpayers;  voters),  bureau- 
cracies provided  by,  456;  grad- 
ual growth  of,  in  the  United 
States,  482;  for  city  officers 
almost  unknown  in  Europe,  484 ; 
legitimate  claims  of,  485  ;  Paris 
under,  4S6;  logically  implies  in- 
dividualism, 488;  as  affecting 
charity  administration,  496;  ef- 
fect of,  629;  reaction  back  to 
limited,  629 

Universities,  state,  480,  522; 
attention  paid  to  the  civic  rela- 
tions in,  629 

Usury,  118;  laws  against, 
118,  119;  disappearing  from  en- 
lightened communities,  119; 
laws  hard  on  borrowers,  120 

Utah,  eight-hour  law  in,  284 

Value,  producers  and  destroy- 
ers of,   102;    values  depend  on 


666 


Index. 


sound  morals,  *  1 02;    should  be 
taxed,  609 

Vampire-Taxes:  see  indirect 

TAXES 

Vanderbilt,  Commodore,  econ- 
omies effected  by,  93,  98,  101; 
fortune  of,   114;    usefulness  of, 

353 

Vaud  (Switzerland),  progres- 
sive income-tax  in,  571 

Vermont,  taxation  of  mort- 
gages in,  60 q 

Vested  Interests,  557 
Vienna,  suffrage  in,  4S7 
Village  Government,  17 
Virginia,  secret  stills  in,  539 
Voters    (see    also    suffrage; 
UNIVERSAL  suffrage),  iguoraut 
and    dishonest,     78,     226,    380, 
518;  city  officers  largely  elected 
by    non-taxpaying,    471;     cor- 
ruption    of,     under     guise     of 
charity,  4S3 ;    proletariat,  484, 
485 ;     rights    of    taxpayers    as, 
484    ff. ;     Tilden    Commission's 
plan,  485;    accommodations  se- 
cured  by   non-taxpaying,    487 ; 
America  can  only  improve  igno- 
rant   and    shiftless,    4S7 ;    non- 
resident,   over-assessment       of 
propertv  of,  595 

Vreeland,  H.  H.,  gets  St. 
Valentine's  Day  check  for  $100,- 
000,  105 

Wage-Earner  (see also  labor), 
and  enterpriser,  92,  103;  better 
chance  for,  112;  two  dollars  a 
day  for  each,  230 

Wagers,  165 

Wages  (see  also  labor; 
SCAMPING  work).  Vary  with 
ability,  89;  Brassey  on,  89; 
General  Walker  on,  90;  often 
in  excess  of  production^  100; 
in  bad  times,  loi.  346,  347; 
returns  of  labor  nearly  fixed, 
104:  those  of  ability  vary 
widely,  105;  rates  of  division, 
107;    minimum  wage,   iii;    as 


capital  117;  piecework,  213; 
only  income,  not  outgo  con- 
sidered, 218;  could  not  rise 
under  sociaHsm  226;  living 
wage,  231,  286,  306,  314;  trade- 
union  coercion  to  raise,  243; 
Prof.  Laughlin  on,  245;  limited 
by  demand  for  productj  245  ;  by 
competition,  245;  by  inven- 
tion, 246;  and  prices,  theory 
of,  306;  J  S.  Mill  on  law  of, 
306;  uniformity  of,  312:  rise 
since  middle  of  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, 328;  in  the  United  States, 
328;  machinists'  wages  in  1842 
and  to-day,  330;  in  Great  Bnt- 
ain,  331;  W.  H.  Mallock  on, 
331  n.;  inflation  of,  333,  627; 
rise  in,  335;  increase  at  ex- 
pense of  capital,  339;  and 
also  of  ability,  340;  and  from 
diffusion  of  honesty,  341 ;  how 
influenced  by  trade-unions,  340; 
protection  and,  548 ;  service  of 
trade-unions  in  keeping  up, 
627 

Walker,  F.  A.,  on  differences 
in  laborers,  90 ;  first  to  clearly 
indicate  shares  in  production, 
no;  on  diffusion  of  wealth, 
326 

Walker,  J.  H.,  on  business 
failures,  97  11.,  209  n. 

Walking  Delegates,  216 

Wall  Street,  actual  rate  of 
interest  in,  119 ;  verbal  contracts 
in  great  transactions  of,  342; 
merchandising  and  manufac- 
turing in,  576 

Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  single- 
tax  theory  of,  596 

Wanamaker,  John,  and  civic 
responsibility,  141 

War,  industrial,  and  indus- 
trial law,  289;  civil,  most  fre- 
riuently    caused    by    taxation, 

530 

Ward,  Sir  Joseph,  on  taxes  in 
Australasia,  458 


Index. 


667 


Waring,  Colonel,  and  mu- 
nicipal labor,  470 

Warranty,  179 

Wars  of  the  Roses,  effect  upon 
militarism,  48 

Waterworks,  432;  why  fit  for 
municipalization,  433;  sewage 
pollution,  433;  municipal  man- 
agement naturally  wasteful,  434 ; 
a  natural  monopoly,  434 

Watson,  Tom,  on  the  money 
question,  359 

Watt,  James,  93 

Wealth  {see  also  capital; 
fortune;  money;  wages)  ver- 
sus poverty,  113;  no  broad  and 
high  civilization  without,  157; 
ways  to,  209;  stiddenly  acqmred 
a  doubtful  blessing^  221;  in- 
crease of,  in  the  United  States, 
221  «.;  often  destroyed  when 
divided,  223;  diffused  only  by 
diffusion  of  ability,  326;  diffu- 
sion increasing,  328;  "rich 
richer  and  poor  poorer  "  not  true 
in  civilized  countries,  328;  in- 
crease in  wages  in  the  United 
States,  328;  in  Great  Britain, 
331;  W.  H.  Mallock  quoted, 
331  w.;  increase  in  wages  and 
decrease  in  other  prices  come 
largely  from  capital's  share,  339 ; 
and  from  labor's  increased  abil- 
ity, 340;  and  from  diffusion  of 
honesty,  341;  and  from  creat- 
ing and  supplying  new  wants, 
343 ;  rich  men  generally  bom 
poor,  348  117;  cases  cited  by 
General  Walker  and  the  author, 
348 «.;  happiness  not  depend- 
ent on,  348;  law  cannot  dis- 
criminate between  rich  and 
poor,  352;  many  stay  rich  de- 
spite giving  away  much,  353: 
cannot  be  used  wisely  by  the 
'communit}^,  354;  duties  0^,354, 
ff . ;  useless  rich  man  a  depend- 
ent, 356;  Emerson  on  the  dis- 
tribution of,  356;  the  poor  not 
the  debtor  class,  372;  nor  the 


class  that  handles  least  gold, 
372;  acquiring,  by  magic,  378, 
in  the  hands  of  the  few,  625; 
628;  desire  for,  beneficial,  629 
Webb,  Sidney,  on  Australia 
291 ;   on  eight-hour  day,  33S 

Wells,  D.  A.,  on  silver  agita- 
tion of  1890,  102;    on  "Recent 
Economic    Changes",    330:    on 
indirect  taxation,  558  n.,  561  n. 
on  perjury  in  swearing  off  taxes 
564;     on    progressive   taxation 
568  M.;    on  multiplied  taxation 
574;    on  personal-property  tax 
58 1  n.;   on  realty-tax,  5 88 

West  Virginia,  personal-prop- 
erty tax  in,  581  n. 

"Wildcat"  Money,  385 
William   the   Conqueror   and 
the  feudal  system,  47,  48 

Wills,  202  ;  who  cannot  make, 
203;  restrictions  on  alienation, 
204;  devises  for  educational  or 
charitable  uses^  205;  must  be 
proved  genuine,  206 
Wilson  Tariff  Bill,  546 
Wisconsin,  anti-boycott  law 
in,  280;  personal-property  tax 
in,  580  n. 

Wisdom  and  sympathy  gain- 
ing control,  63 1 ;  cannot  be 
forced,  63 1 ;  necessary  creed  of, 
632 

Wise,    ,  framer    of    New 

South  Wales  Compulsory  Arbi- 
tration Act,  308 

Woodyard,  Charity  Organiza- 
tion Society's,  499 

Woolwich,  Eng.,  government 
ferry  at,  395 

Worcester,  Mass.  boycott  in. 
28;  examples  of  change  of  for- 
tune, 97  «.,  209  «.;  electricity  in, 
441 

Work  (see  also  right  to 
work),  right  to,  26  ff. ;  life  and, 
26;  society's  alleged  duty  to 
provide,  29;  able  man  finds, 
93;  scamping,  209  ft'.;  pi'=ce- 
work^    213;      forbidding,     214; 


668 


Index. 


slighting,     216;    "right  to    stop, 

258- 

Work-day,  Shorter,  {see  also 
EIGHT-HOUR  DAY,)  Jevons  on, 
338;  production  rising  with, 
338,330;  in  Aiistrian  mines,  339 

Workers,  slow,  provisions  for, 
296 

World,  a  perfect,  629 

Writers  produce  value,  102 


Yale  Students  and  truckmen's 
strike,  88 

Yellowstone  Park,  a  natural 
moiiopol}^,  144 

Young,   the,    and   education, 

517  ff- 

Zueblin,  Prof.,  on  municipal 
progress,  420  ff.;  on  manage- 
ment of  nuuiicipal  utilities,  467 


CAMBRIDGE  .   MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    ■    A 


ON  THE  CIVIC  RELATIONS 

By  henry  holt 

,  (A  Third  and  Much  Enlarged  Edition  of 
"  Talks  on  Civics  ") 


NOTICES   OF   THE   EARLIER   EDITIONS 

"The  author  is  well  qualified  for  the  work  that  he  has  undertaken. 
He  is  thoroughly  informed,  he  is  a  clear  thinker,  and  he  writes  in 
a  plain  and  forcible  style.  It  is  an  ambitious  design — to  declare 
the  whole  duty  of  a  citizen — but  it  is  carried  out  with  as  much 
success  as  could  reasonably  be  anticipated;  perhaps  with  more 
success  than  any  similar  attempt  has  attained.  .  .  .  We  can  heartily 
recommend  his  book  to  young  and  old  as  containing  a  social 
philosophy  of  the  best  kind;  animated  with  the  spirit  of  benevo- 
lence as  well  as  justice,  free  from  cant  and  from  fallacy,  and  practi- 
cal because  based  on  experience.  Even  those  who  do  not  accept  all 
its  conclusions  will  be  benefited  by  observing  how  they  are 
reached.  To  put  such  a  book  in  the  hands  of  an  intelligent  boy 
will  do  much  to  make  him  a  good  citizen." — The  Nation. 

"The  honestest  piece  of  work  we  have  seen  in  many  a  day,  and 
fascinating  in  its  frankness  and  aptness  of  illustration.  .  .  .  Every 
decent  citizen,  or  every  man  who  wants  to  become  one,  ought  to 
read  it  and  to  think  about  it." — Educational  Review. 

"A  good  many  matters  of  both  government  and  law  are  pre- 
sented in  an  exceptionally  lucid  manner." — The  Dial. 

"A  unique  contribution  to  our  politico-economic  literature. 
His  novel  method  has  enabled  him  to  utilize  a  great  body  of  fresh 
and  important  data." — The  American  Monthly  Review  oj  Reviews. 

"Acceptable  and  attractive  to  young  people,  although  the  book 
may  be  profitably  and  entertainingly  perused  by  older  readers.  .  .  . 
He  has  carried  out  his  work  with  great  skill  and  marked  ability, 
and  has  made  an  important  and  valuable  contribution  to  the  litera- 
ture of  civics.  .  .  .  The  author  has  succeeded  admirably  in  his 
selection  of  material,  as  well  as  in  his  treatment  of  the  questions 
involved." — Army  and  Navy  Register. 

"The  volume  is  a  valuable  one,  suggestive,  clear  and  interest- 
ing."— N.  Y.  Tribune. 


TALKS  ON  CIVICS— continued 


"A  book  likely  to  attract  attention  and  to  find  readers.  .  .  .  Always 
readable  and  usually  interesting." — AT'.  Y.  Times. 

"To  bring  the  questions  of  political  economy  down  from  the 
realm  of  the  abstract  and  apply  them  to  every-day  life  is  no  mean 
task.  To  make  them  interesting  is  a  triumph.  We  wish  that 
every  citizen  of  the  Republic  would  read  the  book." — Lije.    , 

"The  book  is  able  and  useful,  and  will  be  found  valuable  by  all 
readers,  as  well  as  by  young  people  for  whom  it  is  specially  de- 
signed."— Presbyterian  Banner,  Pittsburg,  Pa. 

"Young  people  who  are  anxious  to  have  a  just  conception  of 
government  and  citizenship  can  hardly  do  better  than  obtain  this 
book.  The  author  is  a  man  of  rare  insight  in  his  special  field  and 
possesses  a  hearty  sympathy  that  his  readers  will  find  most  win- 
some and  helpful." — Baptist  Union. 

"Tf  one  could  only  get  the  voters  to  read,  mark,  learn,  and  in- 
wardly digest  a  book  like  this  the  most  vexing  problems  of  our 
government  would  be  solved.  If  anything  will  popularize  civics, 
it  ought  to  be  a  book  like  this." — Churchman. 

"Vivacious,  vigorous  and  comprehensive." — Congregatioiialist. 

"The  chapter  on  trusts  and  monopolies  is  eminently  sane  and 
free  from  any  vagaries  of  economic  thoughts.  The  talks  on  tax- 
ation, which  compose  the  third  book,  are  comprehensive  and  clear 
and  discuss  the  problems  involved  from  every  point  of  view. 
This  volume  can  be  unhesitatingly  recommended  to  every  young 
man.  It  ought  to  be  in  the  hands  of  every  student  of  law  as  a 
preliminary  work,  which  will  lay  solidly-built  foundations  for  his 
professional  study  of  the  law  of  real  property,  the  law  of  personal 
property,  the  law  of  contracts  and  all  matters  of  national,  State 
and  local  government.  .  .  .  The  civic  philosophy  infonning  the  whole 
work  is  of  the  soundest  quality." — Philadelphia  Press. 

"Very  entertaining  In  the  highest  degree  practical,  useful, 
instructive  and  edifying." — Buffalo  Commercial. 

"A  most  useful,  readable  and  intelligent  review  of  a  compre- 
hensive field  of  politico-economic  and  sociological  study." — The 
Chicago  Evenifig  Post. 

"A  book  which  will  be  extremely  useful  and  instructive  to  the 
intelligent  American  youth;  it  will  solve  many  difficult  problems." 
— Chicago  Banker. 

HOUGHTON,   MIFFLIN   &   CO. 

BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 


BY   THE  AUTHOR   OF   "CAI.MIRE." 

STURMSEE:  Man  and  Man.  Third  Edition. 

"Charactera  fairly  well  defined  and  interesting,  instead  of  mere 
pegs  for  opinions." — -The  Dial. 

"The  people  in  the  book  .  ,  .  have  (for  Utopians)  an  appeal 
remarkably  human,  and  not  merely  human  but  romantic — • 
after  a  curiously  sublimated  fashion  of  romance.  .  .  .  Glimpses 
of  real  men  and  women." — New  York  Times. 

"The  women  of  the  story  are  delightful  creations." — Liverpool 
(England)  Post. 

THE   SOCIAL   ATTITUDE. 

"Much  study  of  his  fellow  man,  and  more  particularly  of  his 
unfortunate  fellow  man,  has  not  embittered  him.  On  the  contrary, 
he  preserves  a  gentle  heart." — Yorkshire  (England)  Observer. 

"There  is  social  sympathy  of  the  broadest  kind." — The  Dial. 

"The  ideal  man  of  affairs  as  he  is  suggested  in  this  novel,  may 
never  arise,  but  if  he  does,  this  world  will  be  a  much  better  one  to 
live  in  than  it  is  now." — Boston  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

"There  is  no  denying  his  intent  to  be  fair." — Chicago  Record- 
Herald.. 

"For  those  who  care  for  national  growth  and  the  best  influences 
to  uplift  society,  the  book  is  a  call  of  import." — Denver  News. 

"Has  the  welfare  of  the  laboring  class  at  heart." — Milwaukee 
Wisconsin.. 

THE    STORY. 

"...  It  is  perfectly  natural  to  wonder  how  space  has  been 
found  among  such  a  mass  of  economic  matter  for  the  love-story — 
for  there  is  really  a  love-story,  a  pretty  one.  The  feat  has,  how- 
ever, been  accomplished.  .   .  ." — San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

"Contains  too  good  a  quality  of  fiction  and  too  interesting  a  series 
of  discussions  to  be  condemned  because  these  elements  are  mixed.  . 

"It  is  seldom  that  any  writer  with  as  broad  and  balanced  an 
interest  in  the  abstract  philosophy  of  life,  possesses  also  so  facile 
a  creative  gift  and  so  entertaining  a  power  of  narration." — N .  Y. 
Life. 

"Of  course  the  social  questions  have  the  best  of  the  book,  but 
even  so,  there  is  enough  of  dramatic  action  and  human  interest 
left  for  two  or  three  ordinary  novels." — Cincinnati  Enquirer. 

"With  all  its  drawbacks  of  form,  it  is  a  story  and  a  good  story 
at  that.  Contains  some  good  love-making  and  three  fascinating 
women." — Robert  Bridges  in  Collier's. 

'      "Succeeds,  even  better  than  did  Bellamy,  in  interlacing  a  story 
with  the  purpose." — Montreal  (P.  Q.)  Herald. 

"Seldom  has  the  usefulness  of  the  novel  as  the  vehicle  for  a 
preachment  in  sociology  been  so  fully  demonstrated." — Brooklyn 
Daily  Eagle. 


BY  THE   AUTHOR    OF    "CAtMIRE," 

STURMSEE:  Man  and  Man.   Third  Edition. 

"Rises  at  times  to  a  rare  degree  of  dramatic  interest." — Toronto 
Globe. 

"So  full  of  incident  and  character  drawing  and  vivid  conversa- 
tion that  it  moves  without  a  pause  in  the  interest."^C/iicogro  World 
To-Day. 

"The  novel  is  one  of  the  ablest  upon  which  we  have  happened 
for  a  long  time." — London  (England)    Illustrated  Ntws. 

"The  double  romance,  beautiful  and  fitting,  winds  its  way  in 
shade  and  sun  through  the  book." — N.   Y .  Christian  Advocate. 

"Two  beautiful  love  stories  of  compelling  interest." — Phila- 
delphia Book  News. 

"Really  charming  love-making." — The  Dial. 

"You'll  hardly  find  anywhere,  by  the  way,  a  fairer  or  more 
interesting  exposition  of  the  nature  of  that  society  [of  New  York], 
its  vanities,  insufficiencies,  absurdities;  how  it  evolves  and  renews 
itself;  why  people  want  to  be  in  it;  how  they  get  in  or  stay  in; 
how  it  spoils  some;  and  how,  in  spite  of  vulgar  show-folk  and 
spenders  whose  names  are  mostly  in  the  papers,  it  stands  in  the 
aggregate  for  something  of  value." — Neio  York  Times: 

"A  story  of  more  than  common  interest  runs  through  the  volume 
...  so  that  to  the  reader  who  reads  only  for  amusement,  the  book 
will  prove  attractive.  But  it  is  those  who  read  for  instruction 
and  profit  who  will  be  the  greatest  of  beneficiaries." — Boston 
Transcript. 

"One  can  imagine  a  very  considerable  clientele  not  usually 
addicted  to  novel-reading,  finding  these  earnest  and  sometimes 
rather  long-drawn-out  discussions  on  the  rights  and  duties  of  man 
both  fascinating  and  inspiring." — Glasgoui  (Scotland)  Herald. 

"One  must  have  sound  intellect  in  order  to  appreciate  it,  there 
being  nothing  trivial  and  conmion place  about  it."^ — Albany  Times- 
Union. 

* 

"  The  author  launches  into  deep  waters  where  he  is  not  at  heme." 
— The  Academy. 

"  Chaotic  mass  of  words."  — St.  Paul  Dispatch. 

"  The  style  juvenile,  ungraceful,  and  ccffircnplace." — The  Book- 
man (London). 

"  Dull  to  a  degree  ...  he  is  a  dull  dog." — Edinburgh  Scotsman. 

"  Shadowy  personalities  of  certain  so-called  men  and  women." — 
Charleston  Nrins  and  Courier. 

"  A  book  which  leaves  a  bad  taste  in  the  mouth  and  a  sickening 
feeling  at  the  heart.  That  such  complacent  brutality  as  that  with 
which  the  author  invests  some  of  his  characters — invariably  those 
of  cultivation,  means,  and  social  position — can  exist  in  the  modern 
world,  bodes  worse  for  the  world's  peace  than  all  the  prevalent  graft 
and  corruption." — The  Independent. 


BY   THE   AUTHOR  OF   "CALMIRE." 

STURMSEE:   Man  and  Man.   Third  Edition. 

THE    PHILOSOPHY. 

"•'Never,  in  any  volume  of  scientific  sociology,  or  of  sociological 
fiction,  has  there  been  such  a  fair  and  copious  review  of  the  almost 
innumerable  recipes  for  the  alleviation  of  the  inequalities  of  human 
life.  .  .  .  There  is  a  tremendous  deal  to  be  said  for  the  ideas  em- 
bodied in  the  pages.  ...  I  can  advise  all  seekers  of  solitary 
mountain  heights  to  take  it  with  them.  For  the  book  is  in  itself 
a  sort  of  mountain  height,  and  from  it  one  may  look  down  upon 
the  world  as  it  is  with  fresh-beholding  eyes." — Chicago  Tribune.- 

"A  singularly  ripe  and  balanced  conception  of  'the  whole  duty 
of  man,'  as  seen  in  the  light  of  the  evolutionary  philosophy  .  .  . 
exposes  with  keen  and  merciless  logic  the  weakness  of  the  various 
socialistic  panaceas." — The  Dial. 

"To  those  who  will  delight  in  fresh  and  forcible  thinking  applied 
over  a  wide  field  of  human  relations,  we  warmly  commend  it.  .  .  . 
A  man  of  strong  individuality  and  character,  a  thinker  who  is  in 
earnest,  shrewd,  unflinching.  He  chooses  to  conceal  his  identity, 
but  we  imagine  that  there  must  be  many  of  his  countrymen  to 
whom  it  stands  revealed  in  the  grasp  of  these  pages.  There  cannot 
be  many  men  with  the  personality  and  the  experience  necessary  for 
the  writing  of  them." — London  (England)  Illustrated  Neios. 

"The  product  of  a  mature  brain,  a  sound  logical  faculty,  and 
wide  reading." — ^A^.  Y.  Evening  Post. 

"There  is  a  'bigness'  about  his  work  which  is  greatly  attractive.'' 
— Albany  Times-Union. 

"Powerful.  .  .  .  Every  one  must  gain  from  the  patient  perusal 
of  this  able  and  thoughtful  work  .  .  .  has  that  atmosphere  of  acute 
independence  that  savours  of  genius." — Leeds  (England)  Mercury. 

"The  book  is  l^^ng,  but  once  the  reader  grasps  the  problems  that 
the  author  is  striving  with,  he  wonders  at  its  brevity.  .  .  .  Few 
will  put  it  aside  feeling  that  it  has  not  taught  them  some  lesson." 
— New  Orleans  Picayune. 

"There  is  a  cosmopolitan  air  about  the  book,  a  breadth  of  scientific 
knowledge,  that  seem  to  point  to  some  distinguished  scholar  or 
professional  man  rather  than  to  any  of  our  well-known  novelists 
as  the  author." — Chicago  World  To-day. 

THE    STYLE   AXD    CONSTRUCTION. 

"The  ordinary  didactic  novel  is  dull,  but  this  story  is  so  full 
of  incidQnt  and  character  drawing  and  vivid  conversation  that  it 
moves  without  a  pause  in  the  interest." — Chicago  World  To-Day. 

"Handling  a  serious  and  weighty  subject  in  a  fashion  that  is  free 
from  heaviness  of  style  or  monotony  of  narration." — Brooklyn  Daily 
Eagle. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FAD^^^^^^ 


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